PDA as surveillance device in monitoring system

This paper describes the fist stage of a prototype that is being developed using a personal digital assistant (PDA) device in surveillance tasks as part of a monitoring system. The work is being developed and tested using the features of these more and more diffused devices. In the system design, an interface board was used with an embedded controller area network (CAN) to act as a link between the PDA device and the neighbour environment. This application intends to be used in the monitoring and control of environmental factors. The system´s architecture and some already developed software blocks are presented in the following paper sections.