PPC DeviceID, further query

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neville Lang
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Neville Lang

Hi all,

In a recent post, I asked whether we can gain access to a PPC's device ID. I
was directed to a paper written by Neil Cowburn on MSDN and have implemented
it. It does return a DeviceID but it is quite a different number to the one
that displays in the Asset Viewer, Serial# in my iPAQ 3970. Does anyone know
if the DeviceID and the Serial# are two different items? I expected to get
the same number as the serial# on the iPAQ.

Regards,
Neville Lang
 
To the best of my (limited) knowledge, there is no promise that the serial
number and the device id will bear any resemblance whatsoever.
eg : Symbol Serial Numbers tend to be 10 characters long, while Symbol
Device IDs tend to be 32 characters long.
 
Adam,

Thank you for replying to this one. I was not sure what is "standard" out
there, apart from iPAQs. Presumably, if the DeviceID is different to the
PPC's serial number then I assume that it must be unique but not normally
viewable. The other alternative is to use the OEM's Serial#, like the one on
the iPAQ. On this note, two more questions come up:

i) How can I get access to the iPAQ's Serial#, the one that is displayed in
the Asset Viewer? Again, I am assuming that all other brands of PPCs have
some sort of Asset Viewer and Serial#

ii) On a PPC, there is also an owner's name and other details. Is there a
way to get access to the Owner's name detail on the device using C#?

Regards,
Neville Lang
 
Hi,

I suggest that you use the unique DeviceID which you got working.
I use it in eVB for licensing and it is unique for all PDA 2002 and 2003,
the iPAQ is not
working on other PDAs and the Asset Viewer is a Compaq/HP solution.

On your last question (ii) I can't answer, sorry.

Best regards,
Jocke
 
Neville,

If you are doing this on an iPAQ 5000 or 2000 series - use the iPAQUtil.dll
(check out the article Intelligent Applications on www.devbuzz.com). If you
are using the 3600 or 3800 series you can use the CPQUTIL library. If you
haven't already - check out the www.hp.com/developer/ipaq site. It has a
lot of information on device development and a small forum.

I have examples, wrappers and other .NET code that expose the serial, device
name, owner of iPAQ devices... if you would like to take a look at some
source just let me know.

Rick Winscot
rickly@zyche dot com
 
I found your excellent article only after I took apart IPAQUtil.dll and
modified my sample to work not only on 36xx/38xx but on 5xxx as well :)
In any case my small improvement was to avoid using the intermediate eVC
dll.
 
Joakim,

Thank you for your feedback. This information helps me.

Regards,
Neville Lang
 
Rick,

Thank you so much for your reply. I did not know about the HP developer site
so that was a good link, and I have now signed up.

My main problem is that my application will be soon sold to the public and
when it comes to issues of registration code security, I am trying to
develop a way for all devices, not just HP. Hence my query on DeviceIDs on
the NG. I feel that HP iPAQs are more likely to be used, but I cannot just
focus on them because our potential customers could buy any brand and I
would expect other OEMs to do things a little differently. I may end up just
running with the DeviceID from Neil Cowburn's paper for now assuming that
this is a unique ID for each device. Again, he does suggest that not all
OEMs will use it either so I have come up with a workaround under this
scenario.

Thank you again for the valuable link and for taking the time to reply. If I
need some help on the code for the iPAQs then I will get back to you.

Regards,
Neville Lang
 
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