Well, this started as just a simple extension on the UsbSerial library example for a friend who want to use cheap tablets to log data on a bunch of timing-related devices.
This is potentially time consuming, data consuming and hardware consuming...
He wants to see the data and save it to a file if he decides to. He is not very computer literate so I had to compile his wish-list into something I could code.
My first approach was to save the data in a ListView for display and storage until such time that he decides to save it.
The problem with the listview is that it goes away when you rotate the device so I started looking for workarounds.
And here we are
Yes, I thought about saving to a list and only display the most recent data in a listview but that is more coding and as Erel pointed out, it will not save RAM.
So at the moment, I will keep what I have (freeze orientation and use the ListView for storage AND display until such time the data is saved to a file) unless/until my friend makes a compelling case that he should be able to rotate the device while it is running. In that case, I will mirror the data in a list and restore the listview from the list when the devide is rotated. That's not much code.
The reason for wanting to rotate is that the actual length of data that is recorded (the individual records) do not have necessarily fixed length so you could start in portrait and find out some data is outside the display area and would like to see that without losing the data already in the ListView.
But life is tough and sometimes you have to make hard choices and it is one of those times