Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Most mobile phone packages come in one of two varieties, each with particular merits in the HA field.
u
Contract deals are cheap to begin with, because the cost of a (new) phone is subsidized but
expensive to maintain. Unless you convert all your all e-mail to text messages, it is unlikely you
will ever make full use of the “free SMS for life” deals to make it worth the money you pay out
every month on the subscription.
u
Pay-as-you-go deals provide a comparatively cheap barrier to entry, as the bulk of the cost is
up front; running costs are virtually nil. This is more true if you have a surplus phone from,
say, a previous upgrade. The price of individual messages will be higher (than free!), but
because most HA installations send very few messages, this is a worthwhile tradeoff. If your
software goes haywire and issues too many messages, however, you will quickly exhaust your
credit, causing further (and potentially more vital) communications to be lost.
N
The quality or age of the phone isn't important because it will be permanently plugged into a PC at home and
unlikely to suffer the abuse of daily life.
Note
The specific make of phone will depend on the software used. There are a couple of open source projects
here, with most supporting the majority of functionality present on the Nokia devices, along with some Sony
Ericsson handsets. Our basic requirements from a software point of view is that you should be able to send and
receive messages to our phone. Access to the phones address book is useful but not necessary, as that can be better
represented in software. It should also work as a command-line tool.
Gnokii (
www.gnokii.org
) has been the leading software in this field for a while, and its technology has spawned
several forks over the years. Its name presents the fact that the majority of supported devices are Nokia-based,
although devices do work with a standard cable. (See
http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/Config
for a list of known
good devices.) For others, you may have more luck using the Bluetooth driver.
The setup, provided you have a compatible phone, involves a simple configuration file such as the following:
[global]
port = /dev/ttyACM0
model = AT
connection = serial
where the port can be determined by
dmesg
after plugging in your phone, although some others are chosen according
the make and model of your phone. (Determine this from the web site at
http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/Config
.)
Once it's plugged in, you can issue the following to determine that the connection is working:
gnokii --identify
Even though the phone might be able to communicate with Gnokii, the available functionality can vary. So, don't
make critical changes your phone (such as writing data into the address book) without a suitable backup.
14
The easiest functionality to test and demonstrate is that of sending a text message. This is also the most widely
supported.
echo "This is a test message" | gnokii --sendsms myphonenumber
'NOKIIISABLETOPROVIDETHISBACKUPFORYOUWITH
gnokii --getphonebook ME 1 end --vcard >myphonebook.vcf
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