When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2020, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2020, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
The later Psion (or Cannon?) PDAs used monitor-flashing as a way to send serial data to the PDA from PC -- this was used for quickly filling in address books and so-on.
When I used it then I thought 'Wow, this is neat -- but probably dangerous for epileptics.' . Much tidier than dealing with an RS232 interface or the like -- just use a photodiode.
edit: it was the Sharp Zaurus series that used the optical data transfer -- I think. it's been years and I used to be too into PDAs
edit 2 : Royal also had a PDA series with optical transfer; but i'm not sure whether or not Royal made their own hardware products.
edit 3 : I found the Royal organizer : 'Point your FL95 PC Organizer at your desktop PC monitor. Watch as flashing bars of light send information to the FL95 PC Organizer.'
They call it 'Timex Datalink' [0]
https://www.amazon.com/FL95-Organizer-RoyalGlo-Nitevue-displ...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Optical_sensor