Using a Zaurus as Cell Phone

[systemparadox]

I am so gonna have to make my own palmtop...

[speculatrix]

Long ago I had a Handspring Visor with the "springboard" GSM module, and it was pretty good, even though the integration with the standard Palm datebook was crude (basically it had an import feature for its own phone book).

I got quite excited when I discovered that, with a compact flash GSM card there was a chance of doing the same... I found an audiovox rtm-8000 on ebay for a good price (be warned, there are two versions, one with a headset socket which does voice, the other without) - I paid GBP40 (EUR60? USD70?).

At first I thought it didn't work, "dmesg" told me the Z saw the card, but no joy in minicom or zediallar.

It's been a long time since I played with modems (I used to work in data/voice telephony, but not for 10 years, and I've been on broadband long enough that my regular modem is "lost" in a drawer somewhere). I had to discover the following things:
* dmesg on the zaurus reports the new modem device as ttyS03. that's a lie, it's ttyS3
* you have to "cardctl resume" to make the card power up, by default (in Cacko) at least, the card is left inactive/suspended ("cardctl status" tells you if it's there).
* minicom saves its config to /usr/local/etc
* it's best to disable the PIN on the SIM card otherwise the CF GSM card can't register! there is some magic to send the PIN to the CF modem, but reading the AT command set was bending my brain!

once done, the card auto-registered just fine:

    at
    OK
    at+CREG?
    +CREG: 0,1
    at+COPS?
    +COPS: 0,0,"ONE 2 ONE"

A friend works in the mobile industry and he told me where I can download all the AT command codes - they're in the ETSI document 27.007 from
www.3gpp.org specs

A google for "extended GSM AT data" and similar gives good results too.

So, I then tried Guylhem's zedialler.. ringing the Z simply crashes it. I did manage to get it to make a call, but it's not massively robust, but it shows what could be done.

is there a fund set up towards paying someone to finish off zedialler, or, adding some code to kphone/pi??

Paul

[ev1l]

is there a fund set up towards paying someone to finish off zedialler, or, adding some code to kphone/pi??
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There is no fund for KPhone/PI, I dont know about ZDialler.
Thanks for the update though. Have you tested data connectivity at all?

[suruaZ]

* it's best to disable the PIN on the SIM card otherwise the CF GSM card can't register! there is some magic to send the PIN to the CF modem, but reading the AT command set was bending my brain!

at+cpin="1234"

I do it very often while connecting to my GPRS provider with minicom  

suruaZ

[speculatrix]

at+cpin="1234"

I do it very often while connecting to my GPRS provider with minicom 

ah, very good to know that. thanks.

weird, when I enter it, the card then says "OK", registers, and I lose usbnet connectivity! According to /var/log/messages on the PC, it's as if I unplugged the USB port.

at+creg?
+CREG: 0,0
OK
at+cops?
+COPS: 0
at+cpin="1234"
OK
--- if you're on usbnet, quickly unplug/replug USB and hope not to lose ssh session ---
at+creg?
+CREG: 0,1
OK
at+cops?
+COPS: 0,0,"UK CELLNET"


I tried the manual dialup suggested in externe forums:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:MXBMF...lient=firefox-a

and got back the gibberish which is ppp.

So, I've now got to try and get the GPRS stuff working, weird thing is when I resume the card, and use minicom to unlock the PIN, the cacko dialup networking program tells me the card is busy. sigh.
Paul

[suruaZ]

weird, when I enter it, the card then says "OK", registers, and I lose usbnet connectivity! According to /var/log/messages on the PC, it's as if I unplugged the USB port.

at+creg?
+CREG: 0,0
OK
at+cops?
+COPS: 0
at+cpin="1234"
OK
--- if you're on usbnet, quickly unplug/replug USB and hope not to lose ssh session ---
at+creg?
+CREG: 0,1
OK
at+cops?
+COPS: 0,0,"UK CELLNET"

If modem response OK after "at+cpin..." it's mean SIM card accepted the PIN.
Loosing of usbnet is not related to this, I beleive.

I tried the manual dialup suggested in externe forums:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:MXBMF...lient=firefox-a

and got back the gibberish which is ppp.

So, I've now got to try and get the GPRS stuff working, weird thing is when I resume the card, and use minicom to unlock the PIN, the cacko dialup networking program tells me the card is busy. sigh.

On remote location (low signal level) I have problems with connecting to my GPRS provider through the built-in network applet so I do the next:
1. With minicom:
 Unlock the SIM with at+cpin...
 at+cgdcont=... to set up GPRS
 atd1234... to call GPRS provider
 After connection established (CONNECT, and some !}}!}... rubbish) I switch to the next shell window
2. With shell:
just start pppd with something like "pppd file pppd-options"

It works fine for me although not the best (comfortable) solution.

suruaZ

[speculatrix]

I found an interesting program called qtphone:
qtphone

and gotten it to build on linux-x86

very swish user interface. looks very promising. however, it seems totally useless in that it doesn't actually have any code to do the dialling.

however, if it could be built for Zaurus, and the useful code from  zedialler combined with it, it'd be a major step forward!

Paul

[ev1l]

I found an interesting program called qtphone:
qtphone

"As of 2005-05-04 13:26, this project is no longer under active development"
Yeah. As this (and many other projects) proves, a GUI is easy to code but very hard to design properly. Especially for a softphone, it's critical to have a usable GUI, but the really hard work is done behind the scenes, handling the actual functionality, and the integration with the rest of the environment.

[speculatrix]

qtphone

"As of 2005-05-04 13:26, this project is no longer under active development"
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Yeah. I asked the guy why:

Thanks for the interest.

Unfortunately, I have no time to work on it.

My goal was to start up an non-profit org to build these types of products.

That has not happened yet.

Robert.

Yeah. As this (and many other projects) proves, a GUI is easy to code but very hard to design properly. Especially for a softphone, it's critical to have a usable GUI, but the really hard work is done behind the scenes, handling the actual functionality, and the integration with the rest of the environment.

Agreed..... however, in my very humble experience, I can write a tremendous amount of back-end code in the time it takes to develop a decent GUI front-end. But then I don't have much experience of the very latest design tools for creating GUIs (although in this case the Z uses an antiquated version of QT anyway).

I could probably write a useful command-line dialler tool in two days... if I understood all the extended AT+ commands that is!!!

I am still looking for a zaurus app to write, so maybe this is it. I've gotten cross-compiling to work and already submitted a command-line app to ELSIX and I'm working on the qtopia/qt-e tool chain.

Paul

[ev1l]

Agreed..... however, in my very humble experience, I can write a tremendous amount of back-end code in the time it takes to develop a decent GUI front-end. But then I don't have much experience of the very latest design tools for creating GUIs (although in this case the Z uses an antiquated version of QT anyway).

I can design the GUI if you'd like, it's not particularly hard, just a bit time-consuming, and it's very much an evolutive process. You might want to get in touch with Zautrix if you want to patch Kphone to support hardware dialling, I'm sure he's be happy to accept quality patches. I haven't tested it yet, but it's "usable" as in working, so there's probably room for improvement.
Want an real, new assignement? Build software that reads commercial maps for GPS apps? Or maybe a caching feedreader? If it's ideas you lack, I shall provide.

[speculatrix]

I can design the GUI if you'd like, it's not particularly hard, just a bit time-consuming, and it's very much an evolutive process. You might want to get in touch with Zautrix if you want to patch Kphone to support hardware dialling, I'm sure he's be happy to accept quality patches. I haven't tested it yet, but it's "usable" as in working, so there's probably room for improvement.
Want an real, new assignement? Build software that reads commercial maps for GPS apps? Or maybe a caching feedreader? If it's ideas you lack, I shall provide.
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well, I've now tried building qtphone (off sourceforge), but I think it's too reliant on the latest release of the fullblown Qt.

I did wonder about patching kp/pi to add hardware dialling. I suppose that would be the most powerful option.

I used to be really into GPS, and had a Garmin. I analysed the map file format, to see if I could edit it in anyway, and it wasn't v nice. There's already solutions for GPS out there.

I figured, naively, that doing a simple dialler app would be quite easy. As ever, it's putting together the toolchain that's a pain in the arse. I got mgetty partly working, but there's something peculiar with the gsm modem, the Z's usbnet hangs when the modem is doing certain things.

[saiten]

ev1l - do you really look like your avitar? It's giving me nightmares.

[xjqian]

ev1l - do you really look like your avitar? It's giving me nightmares.
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Attatched. Personally, i think he looks more like your avitar.   Sorry ev1l,  if I got the wrong pic

[chrget]

Hi,

back to the thread's original topic -- I finally managed to do a test of battery life using my 5500. With the RTM 8000 and an SD card in, logged onto the network doing GPRS (running IRC all the time, i.e. sending a few frames every couple of minutes), no backlight, processor underclocked to 162 MHz the unit lasted almost exactly 10 hours running off a fairly new internal 1100 mAh LiIon battery (an EN-EL5 compatible battery modified to work with the Z).

So that should give a rough guideline as to what can be expected. Turning the display off completely on a regular basis will most likely add a bit more time, but all in all performance is roughly the same as second generation GSM mobiles -- reminds me of my very first handset (an Ericsson GH-172, IIRC), which had a comparable battery life (but was a lot less fun ).

So unless you want to really deprive yourself, using a Z as a cellphone doesn't really seem like a sensible option, even though the result isn't nearly as bad as some people have suggested in this thread.

Best regards,
Chris.

[ev1l]

ev1l - do you really look like your avitar? It's giving me nightmares.
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No, I look like the picture xjqian posted. My avatar is a porn star in a Mario costume.