Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 5

Received my MemPlug last night and am already on my 5th set of batteries! I have tried three smartmedia cards, all Olympus brand (8M, 32M, and 64M), with same results. Battery indicator improves when smartmedia card is removed from MemPlug.

Also, I have performed some backup and restore functions to test things out, and when I went to look up a phone number, my entire phone list was garbled. Perhaps a low power condition occurred due to the battery drain problem, but everything else seems OK. So far.

Has anybody else experienced either of these problems or have suggestions? I am going to try another brand smartmedia card to see if Olympus brand (with panoramic feature) has a compatibility issue.

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

Only problem I have had is with PiViewer, some images the pure black & pure white areas in a color photos get swapped.. (looks funny)..

-Eric

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 54

I did notice that the battery drains faster with the MemPlug installed but nothing like you have mentioned.....are you in CALIF? Perhaps its a rolling black out! =) J/K


The PiViewer for me makes the images far too small. The Visor's screen is small enough already and when the PiViewer displays the images it makes them more than half the size of the screen. The same with that gMovie program.

Also...I have had two/three fatal errors, one was so bad that I had to do a soft reset just to get the Visor to turn off!

Hmmm....rushed product? I hope that more software begins to take advantange of the memplug locations.

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

I haven't noticed any fatal errors or battery drain issues ..

(then again I have a Prism so there may be different factors involved then on a VDX)

AS far as gMovie goes, the size is set as an option when you convert a video file, you can make it the whole screen if you want..

With PiViewer, I noticed the weird behavior as well.. it seems it's hard wired for hi-res digital camera type images.. (I tried 160x160 jpg's and I couldn't see them as they were too small).. The PiViewer software should only resize the image if it is "significantly" larger than 160x160 (the Visors actual screen size) other wise leave it 1:1 ratio.. or better yet, it should provide you with an adjustable zoom (in/out) factor.

These are just minor gripes though.. I'm still very happy with it..

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Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 70

I've had my MemPlug for more than a month, and haven't seen any of the issues you report with battery drain. I'm just using a cheapy lexmark card that I got for $20 at Fry's. The memplug seams to use quite alot LESS battery drain than the MatchBook adapter I tested. Check the card you are using to ensure that it is 3.3v and not something with a higher voltage requirement.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 35

Piview - crashes

I have seen some battery drain over the last months, but nothing extreme: rechargeable NiMh's last between 7.5 and 8 hrs while alkaline last between 10 and 12 hrs of use. I have a 32 Mb smartmedia card continuously in the memplug.
Piview is not a general purpose jpeg viewer, but is geared to 3.3. megapixel digital cameras. On my 2.3 megapixel digital camera the image displayed on the visor when viewing the picture taking by my camera is smaller and of lesser quality than what I see on the LCD of my camera.
The problem is that it scales the images only by factors of two (and a fixed number independent of the size of the picture) and if it does not fit it scales it one more time which leads to a small picture in that case.
As for crashes, I have had some, and it seems that it helps to reset after removing the smartmedia card. In many cases a soft reset would not work otherwise.
I don't think they rushed the product as it is really stable, but some crashes might be due to software which is not written 100% compliant to specifications by Palm.

Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 159

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tom Pruitt
Received my MemPlug last night and am already on my 5th set of batteries! I have tried three smartmedia cards, all Olympus brand (8M, 32M, and 64M), with same results. Battery indicator improves when smartmedia card is removed from MemPlug.

Also, I have performed some backup and restore functions to test things out, and when I went to look up a phone number, my entire phone list was garbled. Perhaps a low power condition occurred due to the battery drain problem, but everything else seems OK. So far.

Has anybody else experienced either of these problems or have suggestions? I am going to try another brand smartmedia card to see if Olympus brand (with panoramic feature) has a compatibility issue.

---

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Hong Kong
Posts: 12

Memplug Problems

Dear Joshieca,

As our PiViewer is a sofware JPEG decorder with using the Visor CPU to decompress the full size of JPEG image, the image will be displayed shrunken by 8 in both directions. For example, a 1280x960 (pixels) image will be scaled down to 160x120 (pixels), which fits exactly onto the screen. Images smaller than 1280x960 will be displayed centered on the screen. If the image is bigger than 1280x960 (pixels), it will further shrunk by 2. For example, an image of 1600x1200 (pixels) will be scaled down to 100x75 (pixels) and it will be displayed in the center. The maximum image size is 2560x1920 (pixels).

Therefore, to display the full size image on the screen, you can adjust your image size as 2560X1920(pixels) or 1280X960(pixels).

To find more information, please visit our web site www.memplug.com.

Best Regards,
MemPlug Support

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 714

It seems that a lot of people are interested in having smaller pictures than that, my camera is a couple years old and only goes to 1024x768, but thats fine for what I use it for. When you start getting into those high resolutions you need to get some pretty big cards to hold a good size, many just want to see Palm sized pictures to carry around with their Visor - any plans for this?

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Matt Nichols
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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

Re: Memplug Problems

quote:

---

Originally posted by MemPlug Support
Dear Joshieca,

As our PiViewer is a sofware JPEG decorder with using the Visor CPU to decompress the full size of JPEG image, the image will be displayed shrunken by 8 in both directions. For example, a 1280x960 (pixels) image will be scaled down to 160x120 (pixels), which fits exactly onto the screen. Images smaller than 1280x960 will be displayed centered on the screen. If the image is bigger than 1280x960 (pixels), it will further shrunk by 2. For example, an image of 1600x1200 (pixels) will be scaled down to 100x75 (pixels) and it will be displayed in the center. The maximum image size is 2560x1920 (pixels).

Therefore, to display the full size image on the screen, you can adjust your image size as 2560X1920(pixels) or 1280X960(pixels).

To find more information, please visit our web site www.memplug.com.

Best Regards,
MemPlug Support

---

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"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 714

Wait a minute, the demo I tried of gMovie player supports both images & video (I'm getting my MemPlug tomorrow, #$!#@ PalmGear). I presume the version that comes with the MemPlug supports this also & just like videos can be run off the card, so wouldn't that be the best solution for small images?

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 54

Last edited by joshieca on 03-21-2001 at 04:19 AM

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Hong Kong
Posts: 12

MemPlug Problem

Our PiViewer is desiged to read jpeg files from Digital Camera. In order to read 160X160(pixels) images, you are recommended to convert your images with our blunded gMovieMaker and then view your images with gMovie.

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MemPlug

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

Re: MemPlug Problem

quote:

---

Originally posted by MemPlug Support
Our PiViewer is desiged to read jpeg files from Digital Camera. In order to read 160X160(pixels) images, you are recommended to convert your images with our blunded gMovieMaker and then view your images with gMovie.

---

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"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 5

Great Support and another question

I did some further testing with my MemPlug using two different Visors (one deluxe, the other standard) and four smartmedia cards (3 Olympus, 1 Sandisk) and all results seem to point to the MemPlug.

Portable Innovations has already provided me an airbill number for my replacement adapter and just asked me to return the other adapter with delivery billed to them.

I haven't had any problems that required me to reset my Visor, but then my use of some of the PiViewer and gMovie features has been limited due to the battery drain issue. And I am hoping the Address DB corruption is related to the battery issue.

I saw a post asking about the gMovie registration. My disk had a username/serial number printed on it.

I do have another issue. After using the adapter in two different Visors, the CityTime display has been changed on both Visors. The nighttime shading is now horizontal lines and the border between night/day is no longer sinusoidal looking, but vertical. I will try to attach a picture. Has anybody else seen this?

Attachment: p3210366.jpg
This has been downloaded 225 time(s).

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Cincinnati, OH USA
Posts: 107

Re: Great Support and another question

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tom Pruitt

I do have another issue. After using the adapter in two different Visors, the CityTime display has been changed on both Visors. The nighttime shading is now horizontal lines and the border between night/day is no longer sinusoidal looking, but vertical. I will try to attach a picture. Has anybody else seen this?

---

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Michael W. Cristiani
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Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 23

night/day border should be vertical now...

I have a Prism, so I can't vouch for the weird line shading you're seeing.

However, the night/day line should be about vertical right now. March 20th was the first day of spring, which is the midpoint between the shortest and longest days of the year, usually. If you set your date back a couple months you'll see the border "tilt" one way, and if you set the date forward a couple months you'll see it "tilt" the other way.

-kirb

PS- I went back and looked at your pic of how your CityTime is displaying and compared it to mine-- it definately looks a bit TOO vertical. I would recommend changing the date to sometime in late december and see whether the graph changes, but it does appear something weird is going on. My MemPlug doesn't appear to be affecting CityTime, but the version of CityTime on the Prism might be different than that on the Deluxe (My CityTime version # is 2.12H).

Last edited by mpkirby on 03-21-2001 at 04:18 PM

Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Seattle, Washington
Posts: 293

How do you make Gmovie player play the Movie file inside the smartmedia module.
I try to put a movie on my smartmedia card and gmovie player didn't list it.
Do I need to put it on a special folder or what?
Thank's

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: NJ,US
Posts: 94

quote:

---

Originally posted by akur
How do you make Gmovie player play the Movie file inside the smartmedia module.
I try to put a movie on my smartmedia card and gmovie player didn't list it.
Do I need to put it on a special folder or what?
Thank's

---

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 714

Okay, maybe someone can help me with this. I have a Lexar Smart Media reader which I'm trying to use with the MemPlug. Whenever I create folders with it or add an item to a folder, then put it in the MemPlug, the PiMover cannot see certain folders/files. After I remove the card and go to look at it with the reader when I try to open folders/files that are missing it gives me something about an "I/O Error". Even if I create the folders with the MemPlug, then add the files with my reader, it will repeat the steps and stop seeing the folder(s) with the MemPlug etc...

Any ideas? I think its the reader's fault.

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