Digital Ocean Unveils Backlit Seahorse PDA

Vertical Application Device Designed Around Newton 2.0

Personal digital assistants, once the domain of dreamy-eyed marketers who felt that no one should leave home without one, are fast becoming a platform of choice for a growing range of vertical applications. Among the PDAs, Apple’s Newton architecture has demonstrated its ability to make the necessary inroads, not only because of its relatively diminutive size, but also due to its increasingly open architecture which gives third-party application developers the flexibility to integrate the device with an assortment of communication and other peripherals.

These and other features have encouraged Lenexa, Kansas-based Digital Ocean to add a new member to their family of ruggedized, vertically-oriented, Newton-based PDAs. Dubbed the Seahorse, the handheld device features a very usable backlit screen and single PCMCIA slot, together with a set of integrated and modular communication options. As Thomas Patton of Digital Ocean described: “What we’ve done is taken the basic Newton [MessagePad] 120 and, in essence, moved the infrared (IR) port in the device, using that as our inlet into the Newton architecture.”

“We then piggybacked off that so we can now use different types of IR that may be more appropriate for the application. That gives us great flexibility. Now we can do things like 2-D scanners, or add different peripherals that people might want to have attached to it for point-of-sale applications, warehousing, or wherever bar-coding is used.”

Room for Wide Area Communication Options

In addition to scanning, mobile workers also need to communicate and, when out in the field, this necessitates a wide-area solution. With several competing standards already in place in the United States, Digital Ocean has placed its early bets with CDPD, the Cellular Digital Packet Data system. Through some clever engineering, CDPD employs some of the unused time on the near-ubiquitous analog cellular voice network.

Patton explained: “This [newly-created] peripheral bay [inside the Newton] gives us a pretty large area, big enough to hold our first communication option: CDPD. But we also have on the drawing board GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications], GPS [Global Positional System], as well as wireless local area networking.”

The Seahorse is a semi-ruggedized handheld, based on the MessagePad architecture employing the Newton 2.0 operating system.

Greg Myers, Director of Marketing at Digital Ocean, offered another motivation for starting with CDPD: “We have a large customer who wants CDPD. Also, we’re a little bit concerned in general about the data rates over the ARDIS or RAM [Mobile Data] networks. In addition, the infrastructure support that it takes to do the corporate back-end of a RAM or ARDIS solution is quite steep.”

Myers summarized: “So we think that the cellular system is enabling a whole different class of customer—someone who may not want to have their own dedicated mainframe or UNIX gateway. We think we’re taking advantage of a lot of existing infrastructure in the cellular network.”

Patton listed some additional features of CDPD that make it more appealing than other options: “Our view of CDPD is that it’s a true real-time interactive network. It allows you to have real-time enquiries or real-time communication. With some of the more batch-oriented or pager-oriented networks, which tend to be more of a broadcast type network, we find that mission critical applications can’t rely upon the question of whether a broadcast was received. You need to have that handshake that’s built into the operation.”

On the flip side, Patton noted that: “because CDPD is a secondary protocol on the overall cellular phone network, you can get bumped. So you want your communication to be very bursty, with a small amount of data and you’re off.” Digital Ocean plans to make the CDPD option available as early as the second quarter.

Leveraging the Strengths of the Newton

Digital Ocean has been working with the Newton architecture for over a year and a half, most notably on a product known as the Tarpon which is an even more ruggedized Newton-based PDA. With the Seahorse, Digital Ocean is positioning for a moderately less intense environment which requires a combination of flexible work style with equally flexible communication options. Myers characterized the target audience as being “more of what you might call a semi-rugged environment. On this device, the case provides the chief ruggedized quality. We try to cover up all the flaps and add a little cushion. We think that about doubles the Newton specifications, enabling a roughly three foot drop to concrete.”

Myer continued to hint at a large customer that plans a nationwide roll-out sometime in the second quarter. Myer was unwilling to be more specific but concluded: “We’ll keep you posted.”

Digital Ocean Seahorse

• CPU: ARM 610 RISC processor, 20 MHz
• Dimensions: 9.5″ x 4.5″ x 2.5″ (24.1 x 11.4 x 6.35 cm)
• Weight: 48 oz. (1.4 kg)
• Screen: transflective LCD, 320 x 240 pixels, 3.8″ x 2.8″ (9.6 x 7.2 cm) with integrated EL Backlight
• Memory (RAM): 687 KB of system RAM, 1,361 KB of nonvolatile user RAM
• Memory (ROM): 4 MB, upgradeable
• PCMCIA: one Type II slot with 325 mA capacity
• Ports: LocalTalk and RS-232 compatible serial port
• Battery: slide-in NiMH rechargeable battery pack
• Integrated Communication Options: (Radio -LAN) 902-928 MHz DSSS, 2Mbps raw data rate, dual diversity antenna, up to 500 foot range; (CDPD) PCSI UB1 Data and Voice communication module providing CDPD, Cellular fax/data, and cellular voice.
• Modular Communication Options: GPS, GSM, Diffused Infrared.
• Pen: cordless telescoping
• Cost: under $1500 without integrated communication options, under $2000 including either modem or module options.

Digital Ocean
11206 Thompson Ave.
Lenexa, KS 66219-2303
Greg Myers
Director of Marketing
(913) 888-3380 x29
(913) 888-3342 (fax)
[email protected]