Re: [Sheflug] Mobile Linux

[José Luis Gómez Dans <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

	First apologies for the FUD, one gets old and these changes in
technology sweep by :)
On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 03:41:44PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> Sort of. All new phones have IR. At least, all those new ones which aren't
> toys.
> 
> > Usually, you can get a cable you plug in
> > the cellfone and on your laptop's serial port. At least, it used to be
> > like that. I don't know what particular phone you have, but if you have
> > a Nokia one, you might be interested in visiting the gnokii webpage
> > (look in Freshmeat). In general, what your phone does is to act as a 9k6
> > modem between the laptop and th PSTN.
> 
> Gnokii is currently not in a working state, although if you want to read
> addresses from a phone it's okay. The Data transmission is extremely
> flaky, though. http://www.gnokii.org/, I believe. Compiles okay for me,
> but there's a lot of basic errors, and I'm not convinced of the code
> quality. They claim to have written a daemon, gnokiid, but it doesn't even
> separate from the console - I don't expect the quality to improve
> amazingly quickly, although it's much better than it was.
 

	As you say further down the line, the main thing is how to
interface your cable/IR port (trivial distinction) with the modem in the
phone. Obviously, phones don't have to follow a hayes standard (why
should they?), and again, most of the commands are cryptic or built in
somewhere. From what I see, some manufacturers provide a driver that
basically builds an "Hayes API" over their command set.

> > 	But definitely, no IR port needed. have a look at gsm-cables.com
> > (or similar, sorry!).
> 
> Whether you use a cable or IR, the upshot is the same: the phone does not
> present a Hayes interface to the computer; you need software. If you look
> at the circuit diagrams for the cables, there's nothing to them: simple
> MAX232 charge-pump design, simple voltage regulation (3.6V+ tends to smoke
> mobiles), so it's a basic RS232 interface. But the modem on the phone is a
> little more akin to a Winmodem, in that it needs a software interface to
> present the Hayes interface. GSM Modems are sufficiently different to make
> this really difficult: the packets you pass to a phone are very strange.

	I mentioned that above. And yes, the cable is a simple serial
cable with protection. As it usually happens, manufacturers are coy to
quote the commands they use to control the modem, so...


	And IRDA is brilliant with linux. I have this design to have a
remote control for xmms. One of these days, I'll get the soldering iron
out.

	Cheers,
	José
-- 
José L Gómez Dans			PhD student
					Radar & Communications Group
					Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK
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