Connecting to desktop

[grputnam]

I am now having trouble connecting my desk top HanDBase with my iPod touch. I read the post before that said:
"2. To install them to the iPod touch, you'll need to do the following:
Run the HanDBase Desktop. If on Windows, choose Configure and then iPhone/iPod touch users. Create a new user and follow the prompts to complete your first sync. Now close the iPhone/iPod touch user list and use File, Open to open the first file you transferred from your old PC. Choose File, Install to Smartphone/handheld and select your new iPod touch username from the list. Repeat this for all the databases you wish to install and you should be good to go after the next sync."

But I do not see iPhone/iPod touch users in the Configure tab. It says smart phone or other.

I am reading the user guide from HanDBase and it tells how to do this when you have WiFi. I do not have that right now, and may not, but may. How do I connet to my desktop by hard wire.
Thanks,
Gordon

[dhaupert]

Hi,

The hard wire connection is not open to developers to use. Only iTunes can connect via this method. And the way the iPhone protects data is such that no other application can access the data from another application with the except of the iTunes level services that run on the device. So basically the only way we can connect to desktops is over the internet connection, and since the cellular data connection can not be reached from outside sources, that leaves just wifi.

For most users this is fine- as 90% of people have wifi setups already. For the other 10% this can be a problem, but hopefully you saw the section on how to set up an adhoc wifi connection between your device and your desktop/laptop. This still requires that the desktop/laptop has wifi capabilities, but you don't need an actual wifi router in your house/business. Please read through that section in the user guide and hopefully you can use that.

Barring that, there is only one other way to get a database onto your iPhone/iPod touch. On the iPhone, when HanDBase is installed, it is set to respond to any web pages where the link looks like this:
handbase://www.server.com/database.pdb - where server.com is a web server housing a database file and database.pdb is a file that exists on the webserver. This would differ from the typical link of:
http://www.server.com/database.pdb which would be handled by safari.

For a user without any sort of wifi connection, but with access to a web site they can house a file, even temporarily, they can set something like this up to get files to it. It is a bit out there of a solution, I agree, but you work with what you have, and there are not a whole lot of options other than a wifi connection at present.

Hope this helps!

[grputnam]

Dave,
I am not understanding. I want to be able to sync my desktop to my new iPod touch.
I have read a number of the forum replies but they are not making sense to me.
I have the HanDBase 4.1 desktop with all my data for two years.
I have been using my Palm E2
I have set up my iPod touch and do have wifi access.
I have a desk top computer not lap top and get into the wifi through the hospitals system not from my computer.
What are my steps to sync my desktop to my iPod touch for the first time?
Thanks,
Gordon

[dhaupert]

Dave,
I am not understanding. I want to be able to sync my desktop to my new iPod touch.
I have read a number of the forum replies but they are not making sense to me.
I have the HanDBase 4.1 desktop with all my data for two years.
I have been using my Palm E2
I have set up my iPod touch and do have wifi access.
I have a desk top computer not lap top and get into the wifi through the hospitals system not from my computer.
What are my steps to sync my desktop to my iPod touch for the first time?
Thanks,
Gordon

Hi Gordon,

Sorry if I'm muddling it up with too much techno-babble! The basics is that your desktop computer needs to have a wifi adaptor on it. If it doesn't, there is no way to sync with HanDBase on the iPod touch. This is not something we imposed, but a limit for 3rd party apps on the iPod touch. No one else can use the cable to sync either!

If your desktop computer has a wifi adaptor, you can follow the section in the user guide for setting it up. It's here:
http://www.ddhsoftware.com/knowledgebase.html?read=330

The first link has more details on how to set up desktop connect. You'll need to be able to do that in order to sync with it as well. So follow those instructions, and in particular try the ad-hoc setup listed there. If it doesn't work, let us know and we'd be glad to offer some assistance!

The second link on that page goes over syncing in more detail, but does not offer as much info on the initial desktop connect setup.

Hope this helps!

[mwm]

The basics is that your desktop computer needs to have a wifi adaptor on it. If it doesn't, there is no way to sync with HanDBase on the iPod touch. This is not something we imposed, but a limit for 3rd party apps on the iPod touch.

That's not entirely true. I sync all my iPhone apps to desktop boxes, none of which have a wifi adapter. The Windows box is virtual - it's got no real hardware at all, and it's virtual NIC is some generic ethernet thing.

No one else can use the cable to sync either!

That's certainly true: third party apps on the iTouch can only sync over Wifi (unless there's a surprise in 3.0 that nobody has mentioned yet). However, my experience is that the "desktop" box just needs ip connectivity to the iP*; there's no requirement that it have a wireless connection. I haven't tried anything really strange yet (like syncing through a VPN over the cellular network), but everything I have tried has worked fine.

I have a desk top computer not lap top and get into the wifi through the hospitals system not from my computer.
What are my steps to sync my desktop to my iPod touch for the first time?
Thanks,
Gordon

You will have to get your iTouch connected to the local wifi network. After that, open HanDBase on the iTouch and tap the share icon in the lower right-hand corner. That gives you a screen with the URL for the HanDBase server on it: http://#.#.#.#:# (five numbers separated by three periods and a colon). Open a browser on your desktop, and try going to that URL. If you can get to it, you'll get a page with the HanDBase logo and a list of the databases on the PDA .You should then be able to run the HanDBase desktop app as per the manual, or the instruction here, with no problems.

If you *don't* get the HanDBase page, you'll have to talk to your network people to get it fixed - and they may not be willing to do so. There are simply to many things that can go wrong here to try and fix this kind of thing remotely.

[dhaupert]

mwn,

You're absolutely right in that- the requirement is that you can access the same router or network. My Macbook is connected via wifi but my windows desktop has a direct connection to the same router. The user guide for HanDBase explains this in detail, but my above posts omitted that important info- so thanks for clarifying this!

In the above case, it sounds like he's on a large hospital network, so the complexity of getting on the same subnetwork is likely far greater. Not impossible, but most wifi networks use NAT on each router, and usually wifi is kept separate from LAN connections for security reasons.

I should also add that while syncing of apps over wifi is a requirement, there is a possibility of us writing a server based sync where the iPod/iPhone connects to a server via the web. The desktop could connect the same way. This is not something we offer at this time, but have done similar solutions for Windows Mobile and Palm OS in the past, so it's very much doable if there is sufficient demand for this type of service. In this case, it's also not likely a viable solutions due to HIPAA requirements- not very likely a hosted server storing data would be accepted in a hospital. And while we could license the server software for them to use on their own network, we're now talking about a much bigger installation headache for IT!