I'm putting together my presentation for useR! 2011 titled "Experimenting with a tty connection for R". Hence, I've updated the tty connection patch to work with R versions 2.13.0 and 2.13.1. And, instead of re-listing the patch files and re-writing instructions on their application, I've devoted a small portion of my Code page for this purpose.

My plan is to present some of the less interesting uses for a tty connection (e.g. password entry without echo), and then move on to some hardware applications (e.g. reading GPS and temperature data from a serial port). I might even bring my home-made ECG (and cross my fingers that airport security won't mind a bunch of raw electronics and wires :)).