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ENTERPRISE PRODUCT OF THE MONTH
Scientists, flavor your handhelds with at twist of LyME
By Steve Niles
When I was putting together the article found elsewhere in this issue on how a Palm handheld was used on the International Space Station, I really started thinking about the use of the handhelds in scientific fields. When I then learned that Calerga has released LyME 2.2, scientific software for Palm OS devices, I just had to choose it as PalmPower Magazine Enterprise Edition's Product of the Month. You can find LyME 2.2 at http://www.calerga.com/products/LyME/index.html.
David comments on this product
I graduated engineering school way back in 1982. As you might imagine, computer technology was considerably different. When I saw this article, I had to comment. I would have literally killed for this product back then. We would spend entire days plotting out formula results, or we'd have to schedule time on the mainframe (which would output the charts on DECwriter printers). If we could have carried around a device that would let us do this sort of thing, oh, my...we might have even had time for sleep. Today's engineers clearly have it a whole lot easier. And maybe that's why we're seeing so many cool scientific and engineering innovations -- they don't have to spend their days hand-drawing charts. That's, of course, why we're in 2002, and not 1982. We've come a long way, baby! -- DG
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LyME is a Palm OS version of LME (Lightweight Math Engine), which is the heart of a piece of software called SysQuake, another product put out by Calerga.
So, what is SysQuake? SysQuake is software for the design and simulation of dynamic systems, such as an electrical drive that sets the position of the head of a hard disk, the hydraulic systems that position the flaps of a supersonic jet, etc. According to Calerga, SysQuake can be of use in fields as diverse as identification of model parameters and model validation, robotics, statistics, physics, demography, and finance.
LyME 2.2 for Palm OS handheld devices implements more than 310 native commands, functions, and operators (mostly compatible with Matlab) and 70 functions written in LME. Some commands produce graphical output, as shown in Figure A.
FIGURE A
Graphics and text output may be toggled with the T and G buttons at the top of the screen.
Graphics are usually scaled to fill the graphics area. Most graphical functions support an additional argument to specify the color, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
Most graphical functions support an additional argument to specify the color.
Version 2.2 adds 25 functions for linear algebra, input/output (including GUI dialogs), support for multidimensional arrays, and more. LyME 2.2 requires Palm OS 3.1 or higher and at least 1 MB of free memory. Most importantly, though, LyME is available as a free download. You can learn more about how it works at http://www.calerga.com/products/LyME/doc/index.html.
Steve Niles is Senior Editor for ZATZ Publishing. He is also an independent filmmaker and freelance writer. For more information, visit http://www.sn-films.com.
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