OBEX Functionallity in the EthIR LAN

White Paper:

Beginning April 2002, the single infrared port EthIR LAN ESB301/3011b will support OBEX functionality in addition to infrared LAN access. Please refer to EthIR LAN user manual for infrared LAN access.

OBEX is a protocol designed to exchange data, originally designed by IrDA -- the Infrared Data Association (http://www.irda.com) and currently supported by infrared enabled devices such as PalmOS, PocketPC 2002, Windows 2000, Linux and certain cell phones. Applications running on these devices use OBEX to exchange information. Beaming business card is probably the most widely used application among PalmOS devices. Recently, with more and more people carrying palm-sized PDA devices with them, there is an increased demand for "Content delivery" to PDAs using OBEX. "Content" means data, files, information, browsers, or the application in this paper.

For example, at trade shows the program schedule and company specific information can be beamed to the participant's PDA device. At schools, it is very convenient to beam out educational related applications, class schedules, school maps, etc to students with PDA devices. In a classroom, teachers can beam out assignments or tests to students. In a hospital environment, doctors can obtain drug reference library information, synchronize patient information, write prescriptions, and perform charge capturing onto to his/her PDA device using the EthIR LAN devices. The OBEX feature can be used in kiosk, 802.11b hot spot, and other hospitality environments as well.

The advantages of using Infrared and OBEX are obvious. First, it does not require the PDA to be physically attached to and synchronize to a personal computer first -- currently the most common way to install and synchronize applications and data onto a PDA. The problem with synchronization is that a partnership has to be established between the PDA and a computer first, before any data exchange can occur. Secondly, there is no need to prepare various cradles to accommodate different PDA devices as infrared is wireless and form factor free -- acting as a "universal" cradle. Without infrared, different PDAs have unique form factors and thus require PDA specific cradles. It would be cost ineffective to provide for all PDA cradles in one place since significant real estate and cable connection are required to connect all the cradles.

The mentioned EthIR LAN products are specifically designed to support "content delivery" as mentioned above. There are two groups of EthIR LAN that support OBEX:

ESB1000 (EthIR LAN 1000, co-name EthIR STAR 1000)

The EthIR LAN 1000's unique design makes it the only product capable of offering both LAN access and OBEX beaming: either continuous or "on-demand". The unsurpassed versatility of the EthIR STAR 1000 enables this product to work in either a networked mode or in a stand-alone mode making it the ideal product for billboards, kiosks, trade shows, and web payphone applications to beam discount coupons, promotional material and collateral to any OBEX enabled device at pre-defined intervals.

Content is loaded into the ESB1000 using the easy to use software utility provided with the product. The software utility also enables users to define the beaming intervals and keep count the number of successful broadcasts. An additional feature of the versatile ESB1000 is the Y-cable providing a push button for those content where customers prefer "on demand" beaming. Currently, the size of the content is limited to the available memory of ESB1000, which is 550KB and only one content file can be beamed out also this can be a zipped file containing several files.
Click here for a demo.

ESB301 and ESB3011b

The second group is the ESB301 and ESB3011b. Both are single IR port networked devices designed to beam out contents stored on another networked computer, typically a FTP server. The difference between these two models is their uplink, ESB301 is 10/100 base-T and ESB3011b is 802.11b. Since content cannot be stored in their memory, as is the case with the ESB1000, the ESB301 and ESB3011b do not have content size limitation.

This capability makes it possible for a more wide variety of content and applications that can be beamed to a PDA device. Our test result shows that sending a 1 MB file to an iPaq 36xx/37xx PocketPC2002 device using our FIR (Fast Infrared 4 Mbps) device driver takes a mere 20 seconds; it takes 130 seconds if SIR (115200 bps) is used.
Click here for Airport Kiosk Application demo / Click here for a Coffee Shop Application kiosk demo.

Since the contents are stored on a FTP server on the network, some programming is required to tell the ESB301/ESB3011b which Content to get from which server and then beam it out. We provide the following software package (SDK):

A COM and Visual C++/Visual Basic sample code. Your PC application using the DLL not only can program the ESB301/ESB3011b to beam out content from the network server, but also can receive data beamed from the OBEX enabled handheld. Your application will be notified once the data is stored on the predefined network server or PC.