The files on phatIO can be exported to dropbox allowing a cheap way of exporting the phatIO functionality to other computers or other devices that support Dropbox.
This has this currently only been tested with phatIO hosted on a Linux and OS X computer and Windows 8 but should work on Vista/Server 2008/Windows 7. Please email if you’ve managed to export a non NTFS (eg FAT) disk to Dropbox.
Dropbox is not a realtime communication system - latency will be atleast a few seconds (although on a LAN computers won’t be communicating via the Dropbox servers - if LAN synching is enabled in Dropbox). Tests have been done editing the phatIO’s pin files on a dropbox capable text editor on an ipad, with the relevant pins going high/low after 2 to 4 seconds.
Similar functionality may be possible with Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive.
Directories should be symbolically linked from the phatIO to your dropbox location, the following would export the entire io directory to Dropbox.
ln -s $PHATIO/io ~/Dropbox/io
alternatively individual directories can be exported:
ln -s $PHATIO/io/dev ~/Dropbox/io/phatio
Unfortunately Dropbox will overwrite links to individual files (removing the link with a new version of the file) so directories have to be used.
From a Command Prompt (Windows-R cmd) type the following to export the entire phatIO filesystem:
mklink /D C:\Users\me\Dropbox\io F:\io
where c:\Users\me\Dropbox
is the location of your Dropbox directory and F: is the location of your phatIO device.
As with Linux file links don’t appear to work - directories have to be linked.
Any questions and suggests please discuss in the forum.