Palm Pilot Based Restaurant Application. ECE 145 Senior Design Project Winter Quarter 2001 Professor Chou

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1 Palm Pilot Based Restaurant Application ECE 145 Senior Design Project Winter Quarter 2001 Professor Chou Authors Cheryl Andaya ID# Hsien Lai ID#

2 Introduction Most of us as kids watched cartoons and one cartoon that predicted the future was the Jetsons. They had flying cars and robots serving people. We have not reached that point yet but we are getting closer. When we go to a restaurant or any place that serves food, we still have to go through a person to order and serve our meals. Well, that can change slowly. The consumers can order their food through a program on the Palm and have a robot serve them their meal. No human servers needed. Everything will be done electronically. The only thing that consumers have to do is pick out the food they want to eat. Thinking about eating in a restaurant where no waiter or waitress will push the customers to make order and customers don t need to pay tips. Palm restaurant menu application can achieve this goal. The PDA menu application provides an electronic menu for customers. Restaurant customers look at a Palm for menu and decide what they want. After browsing through the menu, the customers can input what they like and send the data back to central computers in the kitchen. Background and Related work Before actually starting the project I went through a lot of web sites to download all sorts of programs to see what the user interface was like. Some were easy to understand and some were not. I would get lost in some of the programs because they would leave out certain explanations. The program is designed for a Palm III or higher. The first thing that we needed to do was to design a simple yet effective user interface. That is where the research on the different programs helped. We were able to create a UI that is easy to use. The Code Warrior Tutorial and the Palm OS Programming Bible were my main resources. I tried to look up information on the web but it was so cluttered that it took a long time just to find things. When I did find something that I needed, the information was limited and not clear so I decided to just go through books since it was more organized. The Code Warrior Tutorial was very helpful. I went through half of the tutorials before actually programming the restaurant application. I felt that I needed to somewhat understand how to program in the Palm and feel somewhat comfortable with the tutorials so that I can use it to my advantage. I learned how the resource files and the source code related. I learned how to create forms, buttons, labels, icons, menus, checkboxes, etc. I also learned how to program and call up each one to do a certain task. For example, I was able to program a button to call up a certain form. The Code Warrior Tutorial explained how to program buttons as well as the Palm OS Programming Bible. I would go back and forth between the two to learn how to do different things. In the Palm OS Programming Bible I read Ch.1 Understanding the Palm Computing Platform, Ch.2 Understanding the Palm OS, Ch.4 Writing Your First Palm OS Application, parts of Ch.9 Programming User Interface Elements-Programming Check Boxes and Push Buttons-Programming Menus, Ch.11 Programming Tables, and Ch.14 Beaming Data by Infrared. Certain parts and chapters I skipped because I learned it

3 through doing the tutorials like using the Constructor to create forms, buttons, and menus. // By Cheryl Andaya Palm OS 3.5 SDK Examples source code of many Palm application examples. CodeWarrior Documentation talks about Palm OS projects, target setting for Palm OS, C and C++ for Palm OS, Palm Resources, and trouble shooting for Palm Palm OS Tutorial Step by step tutorial that goes over creating a form, button, menu, and text field, storing and retrieving text in a database, adding a list for record selection and displaying, using a table to display the database etc Palm OS programming for Dummies A reference book for writing application for programs on Palm devices. Palm OS Programming Bible A reference book that has a complete coverage of Palm OS programming which includes building forms and menus with constructor, sync applications with desktop computer through conduits, transfer data by beaming, using a serial port. The main project of our group is to build the user interface and be able to connect data on the palm to main computer. Two main categories I read from above references. 1.Learning how to build user interface. 2.Learning how to build conduit. A conduit is simply a desktop program that can backup data on the Palm device, access to the information on the Palm device from a desktop application, and edit information on the desktop and move that information to the Palm device. // By Hsien Lai Project Specification The basic concept of the application is to get user input and then display what they chose. The user checks off the food they would like to order and the output will be displayed on a form. That form will display the food that the user chose, the price of the item chosen, and the total price of all the items added together. We decided not to use a database since we did not need to hold a lot of information. Global variables were used when a checkbox was checked off and the button Add was pressed. The output was in turn put into a table that is in the output form. There is a constraint on the table that we are using. My partner programmed it to only take 9 orders max. I tried to manipulate the table to be able to handle an infinite amount of orders but it would not work in my favor so I decided to leave the table as it was before. There is another constraint on the application. The form that contains what they chose and the total cost is set. The user cannot erase or delete certain items afterwards. The only remedy is to start over and re-order all their food. I assumed that we are using a Palm III or higher. The program is not that big so it should be compatible with most Palms. The only other hardware added is another group robot(henry and Joe). Our projects will (or at least attempt to) combine. A serial port or

4 IR is not needed since our programs will be on the same palm and their program will call ours when needed. Our program will be used to take the order on a Palm that the robot is carrying and when the order is set, the robot will go back into the kitchen and display it. The robot then will come back to the table with the food ordered. As of now, the application runs as an OS application. When the icon is tapped, a list of categories like Appetizers, Soups, Drinks, Main Course, and Desserts buttons are displayed. After any of the buttons are clicked, a form with those types of foods will be presented. // By Cheryl Andaya In this project, as we finish the user interface, the user can browse the menu and make selections. Users input click on their selections and the PDA outputs a summing list. Besides, the PDA can support synchronization of the selection list with the desktop by writing a conduit. We will need to synchronize the data to a computer. At the beginning, we choose IRSync because we don't want the trouble of plugging and unplugging the serial ports. IBM has free IRSync software, which allows us to HotSync via infrared to an IR-equipped computer. However, as Cheryl mentioned above, our group design will combine with another group and thus eliminate the process. Platform used: Palm III, Windows Application area: Restaurants The main user interface would look like a restaurant menu. Customers can choose from some big categories such as appetizers, wine, desserts, and beverages. Under each category, detailed menu will pop out. Customers can tab on what they choose and go back to the main page. After all the selections, a list with all choices is displayed to let customers make final decisions. After the customers finishing order, the data is send to central computers. Besides inputting the selections, conduit can map database between the palm and desktop. Conduits are supported for multiple versions of the HotSync applications, and on either Macintosh or Windows hardware platforms, which our group is going to use Windows hardware platform. Under Window, we can use either Java or C++. Palm.com provides different development tools for download. Designing conduits takes many considerations that may be harder than implementing it. Three goals with a Conduit: 1.A secure backup for the data on the Palm device 2.Access to the information on the Palm device from a desktop application 3.A means for the user to enter or edit information on the desktop and then move that information to the Palm device. // By Hsien Lai Project Design This project will corporate with another group to let this project work. For instance, the main point of this project is to lessen human resources needed, and have customers take

5 the orders themselves. Therefore, a robot vehicle will replace the waiters or waitresses to bring the PDA to Sync data to computer. The user interface has two high-level modules: Store/List module and Calculation module. The store/list module store and display what customers have selected and what dishes have been served. The calculation module calculates the total price for the customers. The conduit has a hierarchical style module. The highest-level module contains the basic sync functions. The other two modules have functions that are called by the highest-level module. When building the conduit, what the application program interface needs is the palm java package. User interface module: StartApplication(void){//begin of application} Entrees_FormHandleEvent(EventPtr event){//handle the entrée form} MainFormHandleEvent(EventPtr event){//handle the opening form} AppetizersHandleEvent(EventPtr event){//handle the appetizer form} DessertsHandleEvent(EventPtr event){//handle the dessert form} BeveragesHandleEvent(EventPtr event){//handle the beverage form} ApplicationHandleEvent (EventPtr event){handle the different applications} TotalHandleEvent (EventPtr event){//handle the summing list form} 1) The first form shown contains buttons that lead you to forms like Appetizers, Drink 2) The user picks one of the buttons so that leads you to another form that contains foods pertaining to that group. 3) There are check boxes next to the name of each food so the user checks off the foods they want. 4) When the user is satisfied with the foods chosen, they click the add button. 5) The add button takes the user to a form that shows what they chose and the total cost. 6) The user can add more if they like by either choosing the Main button or clicking on top that will display a menu of all the subgroup of foods. If they are not satisfied, then they can start over by clicking on Start Over and reorder. If they are satisfied then they are done. 7) Each form, except the intro form, contains a menu that pops down on top that makes it easier to navigate than to always have to go back to the Main form. For example, when you are in the Drinks form and you want to order some more fries, all you have to do is click on the title Drinks and a menu containing all the other groups like Appetizers will appear. There is no need to keep going back to the main form. Conduit modules: MenuCond module, MenuId module, MenuRecord module //By Hsien Lai

6 Development Plan The development environment that I am using is Code Warrior Lite. I obtained that through the class website under schedule that contained a link to it. The emulator that I used was also from the class website. I chose emulator-win.zip since I am using windows. I obtained a.rom file from another site because the.rom file from the class website did not work. I realized that our program only works with that emulator. It does not work with the emulator that is included with Code Warrior Lite. We decided to work on the UI somewhat individually. We came up with a rough UI outline and tried programming it on our own. We wanted to both learn so we had to try it out ourselves. We came up with similar forms except that I had checkboxes and she had buttons. We both did research on everything and would converge the knowledge that we had learned. Sharon was able to program the buttons to add that item to the table in the output form after it had been pressed. She created the table that held the items. I used her code and manipulated it so that it can be used with checkboxes. I did research on checkboxes to figure out how they work. This took awhile to figure out because I wanted the program to know which was checked and which was not. I learned how to use ctl to do what I wanted. There was a control for each checkbox. So if the checkbox is checked off, the control to that checkbox would be one. After the user is done checking off the checkboxes then they would press on the button Add. After being pressed, the program knows which checkbox was checked off and would add that item to the table in the output form. I wanted to include a popup trigger to the UI but I found it difficult to program. I could not get it to work so I used pop down menus instead. That was easier to understand since it is basically from the tutorial. Sharon did research on Conduits, and I did research on IR beaming. After meeting up with Henry and Joe, we realized that beaming might not be necessary. We could combine our codes and put it into one Palm. The code combining is a little tricky since some of our functions have the same names. We did all our testing on the emulator since we both do not own Palm Pilots. Unfortunately, our program only works on the windows emulator. It does not work on the emulator that came with Code Warrior and it did not work with the emulator on the Professor s Macintosh. The testing we did was to ensure that our program is working. I tried different cases in which I ordered a lot of food even though I knew that it could not handle it. We would need a scroll bar if the order was more than 9 but our table could only handle 9 items maximum. If an order of 10 or more were placed, the program would crash. If 9 items were ordered and the Start Over button was pressed, the 9 th item would still remain in the table. We started our project pretty late so we really rushed in coding the UI. Fourth week was our first week in starting the project. So I attempted to finish up with the tutorial but was only able to get halfway through because it was taking too long and we had to start programming the UI. For the next 2 to 3 weeks, we were able to mostly finish up the application. There were still bugs but for the most part, it was complete. For the last 2 to 3 weeks, we tried to understand IR beaming and conduits. For the last week, we tried to combine our project with Henry and Joe s. // By Cheryl Andaya

7 CodeWarrior and Java language is used for the development environment. 1. Code Warrior is used to build the user interface. The menu user interface has several layers. The first layer is the main category that has entrees, appetizers, desserts, and beverages keys. Click on either one of them goes to a sub layer. Please see below. Main Menu Sub Category Sub Category Total Selection 2. Adding functions to the user interface. Our plan is to create another form that list all the selection made by the customers and the total price after clicking ok on the main menu. To use dynamic memory in Palm programming, I can use global variables for small to medium sized variables, allocated memory for larger, variable sized data, or databases for truly large data. Since the menu order selection does not need large data memory support, I choose to use global variables. 3. Writing program for building conduits to the desktop. Step 1 is to create a source code that the conduit uses to store records it reads from the PDA. This source code needs to load the values of the record directly from the PAD or from a desktop text file, store the values to the PAD or to a desktop text file. Then create a file that maps each desktop ID to the corresponding Palm OS Id. And Write the mapping text file that contains the IDs. Finally, retrieve the various values of the record. Step 2 is to create a source code or class that does the work of synchronizing the Palm OS and desktop databases. // By Hsien Lai

8 Project Evaluation Qualitative: We did not end up building what we initially specified. Our initial plan was to do everything in a complicated manner. We realized that we could get close but not fully execute it. For the most part the UI turned out to be successful but there were some features that I wanted to include. I wanted the table to be editable in which there would still be checkboxes next to the items so that the user can delete items they decided that they did not want. I went about that by adding a Start Over button that deletes everything and the user would have to start over. Another feature that I wanted was to have a send button that would send the form with the items to a server but that would be an entirely new project to take on. After realizing that, we decided beaming would be better. We did not realize beaming would also be difficult especially when it seems like other groups were not able to get it to function correctly. Beaming seemed to require a database and a database is something we did not use. We initially thought we needed a database but realized that we did not need it for our program to work without thinking about the beaming. We did everything one step at a time. By not using beaming, we combined our project with the robot so that beaming would not be required. Our two programs would have to communicate with each other within the same Palm Pilot. Our application can be expandable if someone wants to take it to the next level. At this point it is a prototype that can be improved. // By Cheryl Andaya The interface part and the conduit source codes are completed. However, this project is not completed due to the uncompleted database implementation. The difficulty is to realize what library functions are needed for a particular execution. // By Hsien Lai Quantitative: The performance of the application is great if the emulator for windows is used and only 8 items are ordered. We effectively used the UI functions however there is always room for improvement. // By Cheryl Andaya With our first decision, the memory needed is small, and thus we choose to use global variable. However, to conduit the palm record needs to have a database implementation, which can result a lager memory space needed. On the other hand, the menu OS application is capable to run on a palm pilot instead of an emulator and, the performance is very well // By Hsien Lai

9 Concluding Remarks I learned how to program certain UI functions in a Palm Pilot application like buttons, checkboxes, forms, menus, and tables. I was able to understand most of the code in the tutorials that I had completed and how it related to what I was doing in the.rsrc file in Constructor. I felt accomplished in that I was able to program for the Palm because I have not coded in awhile and I have never coded for a Palm Pilot let alone used a Palm Pilot. I realized that a lot of research is needed in order to complete a project. There is still a lot of room for improvement. There could be a Send button that I stated earlier in which it would automatically send it to a main computer like via Internet and not through beaming. The main computer would receive the orders and broadcast it to other monitors that are located in the kitchen and to the cashier. There is also a need for improvement concerning the table that receives the items that were checked off. The table needs to be more flexible and be able to handle more than 9 items. The table also would be better if you can edit the contents and delete certain items that were chosen. Scrolling bars could be added so that more items can be added to each subgroup of foods like the Main Course form and to the form that contains the output. // By Cheryl Andaya In this class, I did a lot of research and learned a lot of useful information. However, when I read the reference book, I got some frustration on reading and understanding due to the books complexities. And I also encountered some technical problems such as some library functions are not recognized in the CodeWarrior Lite development version. Another problem is due to lack of time that we have only ten weeks to accomplish our project and we spend a lot of time on decision making and has left less than five weeks for implementation. The other problem is that my group partner and I are amateurs to the palm-based project. This ten-week project is a short period. For instance, I find a helpful source code to help me on the database handling two days before the presentation. Unfortunately, under the lack of time and huge pressure, this project has not finished as I plan. Hopefully if I got more time, I could finish what remained unfinished. // By Hsien Lai Credits Examples from Palm OS programming for Dummies, Palm OS Programming Bible, Palm OS Tutorial helps us on implementing source codes. User interface application - Cheryl Andaya, Hsien Lai Conduit source codes Hsien Lai Report Write-up Cheryl Andaya, Hsien Lai. Each person s contribution is comment after each section.

10 Bibliography CodeWarrior Documentation CodeWarrior Tutorial Palm OS 3.5 SDK Examples Liz O Hara & John schettino. Palm OS programming for Dummies. California: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. Foster, Lonnon R. (2000). Palm OS Programming Bible. California: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. Palm OS Tutorial

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