A 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.
There is a new release, version 1.7, which is strongly recommended for all new and existing users. This has better awareness of different screen sizes and a choice of image display modes that can give much better picture quality on high resolution screens, It also introduces a basic GPS capability for logging location in plant list records. In addition, there are a number of bug fixes and performance improvements.
Note that Plant Base Mobile is complete self-contained 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 management, add/update/delete plant records and add/delete
pictures. The database content is the same as desktop Plant Base, only the pictures
have been reduced in size to match the smaller screens and minimise storage space.
- Runs on Pocket PC PDA's, with MS Windows Mobile 5 or 6.x *
- 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.
- GPS location logging for plant list records.
- Will synchronise with the desktop database.
* The initial version is specifically for Pocket PC / PDA type devices with touch screens, it will not run under the non-touch Windows Mobile
phone 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 fine. Running under WM
2003 is also theoretically possible, but devices tested so far
have encountered resource problems and some features may not work.
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).
Originally designed for devices with displays of 240x240 or 240x320 (portrait
or landscape). Will also scale to higher resolution screens and support VGA and WVGA devices of 480x640 and 480x800.
The database files
are quite large, so installation will normally need to be to a
Storage Card. The standard install currently uses about 130Mb.
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).
New stuff:
As well as bi-directional synchronisation, the package now includes an additional tool to convert your own PC database files. This means it is 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.
This latest version makes better use of larger screen sizes, commonly found on newer devices. It is difficult for us to test all the possibilities, but the program should produce acceptable displays on most screen formats. Portrait/landscape mode switching is supported. High resolution screens are supported by automatic scaling. There is option to show pictures at native pixel resolution, which overcomes the issue of poor quality caused by up-scaling.
Devices with GPS can record location in plant list records. This simple to use function gets co-ordinates directly from the Windows Mobile intermediate GPS driver. No conversions are done, so the values will normally be based on the WGS84 datum and accuracy will depend largely on the equipment used. Perhaps no substitute for a bespoke GPS solution, but gives the possibility of low-cost location logging for tree surveys and so on.
The licence code validation has been changed with this version. The code is now stored in a simple ini file, similar to the desktop product. This makes installation easier and more flexible. A valid ini file can be generated on the desktop and copied or else provided separately. It is plain text, so can be viewed or edited. As before, the same code is used for desktop and mobile programs.
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, but could also be used as a standalone mobile application. It is included on all the new Plant
Base CDs or may be downloaded here - DeeprootPB_MobilePC_setup.exe.
The single Windows install file
includes both the mobile device and PC Sync/convert components. Please note that only registered users will be able to complete the installation successfully.
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 are fully functional. However the mobile edition is still under active development and
all versions should still be considered as a Beta release. We cannot
guarantee successful installation and running on all hardware device models.
