A new major development bringing the full
information and power of the Plant Base database to mobile
devices. Take Plant Base with you, where ever
you like - use it to help identify plants, check suitability,
view or take notes, add photographs.
We have now released the 4th Beta version. This is essentially the same as the prevoius releases, but the mobile program has been re-built with the latest compiler and includes automatic scaling for higher resolution screens. It includes several bug fixes and an additional tool to convert your own PC database files. This means it is now possible to create custom content databases for the mobile edition as well the PC product. This page describes how to create custom database files for the desktop. They can simply be used as input files to the converter.
Note that Plant Base Mobile is complete application, not just a front-end to an online database. Once installed, it does not require any kind of connectivity in order to work.
Plant Base Mobile has all the main features of the Windows
product - plant selection by name or advanced search criteria,
personal list managment, add/update/delete plant records and add/delete
pictures. The database content is the same as desktop Plant Base
and it has bi-directional synchronisation with it. Only the pictures
have been reduced in size to match the smaller screens and reduce
storage space.
- Runs on Pocket PC PDA's, with MS Windows Mobile 5 or 6 *
- Same plant information and pictures as the desktop version.
- Highly efficient database built on SQLite.
- Program code entirely rewritten specifically for the Pocket
PC.
- Find plants by any criteria.
- Full Personal Plant List support.
- Will synchronise with the desktop database.
* The initial version is specifically for PDA type devices, that
is with touch screens, it will not run under the SmartPhone only
editions - (we hope to produce a compatible version in the near
future). Touch screen smartphones, e.g. running WM5 for
Pocket PC or WM6 Professional, are supported. Running under WM
2003 is also theoretically possible, but devices tested so far
have encountered resource problems.
Requires MS .NET CF 2.0 or better - which is pre-installed
with WM6, or for previous
OS versions is a free update from the Microsoft website (Google "Microsoft .NET compact framework 2.0 sp2" or similar).
Designed for devices with displays of 240x240 or 240x320 (portrait
or landscape). It should also scale to higher resolution screens. Native resolution editions for VGA and 480x800 screens are a future possibilty.
The database files
are quite large, so installation will normally need to be to a
Storage Card. The standard install currently uses about 110Mb.
Plant Base Mobile has been written using Basic4PPC from Anywhere Software, probably the most efficient development tool for Windows Mobile.
For more details of the application see this page of screen-shots (contains a number of full size images - may be slow to load).
Plant Base Mobile is free to registered Plant Base users,
whether existing or new. We see it as a partner product to the
main desktop program, so we are not currently planning to offer
it as a standalone mobile application. It is included on all the new Plant
Base CDs.
A single Windows install file
includes both the mobile device and PC components, downloadable here - DeeprootPB_MobilePC_setup.exe. Please note that only registered users will be able to complete the installation successfully.
However if you are interested in running only the mobile version alone,
please contact us to discuss your requirements.
The Windows Mobile program is proving very stable on our test
units and recent versions have had relatively few code changes. However
it should still be considered as a Beta release and we cannot
guarentee successful installation and running on all device models.
Many changes have been made to the PC Sync program, which is the most complex part of the package. A help file is
now included with the Sync program.
