It would be nice to be able to use standard USB devices on PDAs. Specifically USB thunb drives, camera's,scanners, camera's etc. What would it cost to add a USB root device, in terms of power and processing overhead?
The newer machines with 400Mhz CPUs and ample RAM would seem to have ample processing power, and so long as the devices were either self powered as in the case of externel hdd/cd/DVD, etc) or low power (like the thumb drives). The PDA would not lose too much battery life. I've even scene USB chargers for some phones, so perhaps they could be used to even provide power when connected to a desktop system.
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What are the power requirements for USB? That would be the main problem I think...
The power requirment for USB shouldn't be a problem if the external devices provide their own power supply. Maybe you could even extend the power to the PDA with the peripheral instead of the peripheral powering the PDA.
The battery in my digital camera (Logitech 130) lasts forever.
How do keyboards plug into PDA's? maybe all that is needed is an adapter? Either an adapter that makes USB work with the standard PDA port or how about a powered USB adapter with an IR port. You plug in your USB device, it uses the power from the adapter, and the IR port allows you to communicate with your PDA (I think all PDA's have IR's, but IR speed is lower than USB).
USB would have to be built into the archictecture of the system, it is too complex to tack on through the expansion port.
AFAIK, recent PocketPCs have USB.
Or, as I have thought, make a limited "dumber" USB which supports less devices, and more directly communicite with devices which have a "dubmb" USB mode.