wrote a cell phone phonebook to database app (phonebooktool)

[Void Main]

I got the family new phones for Christmas and the new ones are a lot more capable than the old ones. My new ones are the Motorola RIZR Z3. I've been tinkering with different ways of connecting them to Linux. I was hoping to find a phonebook application in Linux much like the Motorola Phone Tools but didn't find anything that suited my needs. I am able to connect to the file system on the phone and copy music files, pictures, and movies to and from the phone and I am able to connect to the modem in data mode without any trouble.

I noticed the phonebook and messages do not show up on the file system. I found out I can access them through the modem but not quite in the detail that the Phone Tools accesses them (but almost). I have been able to pull most of the phonebook and call data but I can't figure out how to get the categories. Also, if you use a nickname along with the real name only the nickname seems to get read.

Anyway, I pretty much just wrote it today and it's just a start. Maybe if other people are interested in it they can help pretty it up. It's functional but not pretty. Basically you just plug your phone into the USB port, click the "Import Phonebook" link and it will pull your phone information and the phonebook data into a MySQL database and you can then browse it in the web interface. It can keep data from multiple phones.

I guess next I need to make it so I can edit a record and add new records and push them back to the phone. I am pretty sure I can add records to the phonebook on the phone in a similar way but again I don't know if I can put the new or modified entry into a specific category or differentiate between the real name and a nickname.

I just put it up in *.tar.gz and *.rpm format here:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/RPMS/phonebooktool/

It can be yum installed if you add the repo file to your /etc/yum.repos.d:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/fedora/voidmain.repo

Here's a demo of the interface:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/phone/

Again, it's not pretty, just a start. Click on the phone's number to pull up the list in the database that was retrieved from the phone. If you hover your mouse over the picture or ringtone icons it should pop up the name of the song or picture you have assigned to that contact.

[Void Main]

Found a nice little app for sending/receiving SMS messages:

http://www.gammu.org/

The GUI is called "wammu" and is in the repositories "yum install wammu". Also figured out how to connect to the modem side of my phone via bluetooth. I was able to look at the file system via OBEX before with the default bluetooth setup in Fedora but looks like you have to do some manual configuration to connect to the modem:

http://www.integrasoftware.it/index.php ... &Itemid=28

I don't use the ppp connection, just the modem for the SMS/phonebook communication as I do not have a data plan.

[Void Main]

Hmmm, for some reason wammu cannot read my phonebook over the bluetooth connection but it can from the USB connection. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because my little app and kmobiletools doesn't have a problem reading it over bluetooth. Weird. Looks like I'll have to go with kmobiletools:

http://www.kmobiletools.org/

It also has an issue with the way I have my phone entries entered. I have them entered in 10 digit format instead of 11 digit with the leading "1". When I go to send an SMS from my phonebook using the 10 digit number kmobiletools tells me it sends the message with no problem but the message never goes through. If I add a "1" to the beginning it works. I don't see a configuration option for automatically adding a prefix so I'll either have to mod the code or change all my phonebook entries, or remember to add the 1 when I send a message. :(

[Void Main]

Well, downloaded the latest version of kmobiletools (0.5.0-beta3) and built a new RPM and looks like it works a little better. It must automatically add the "1" for me because the SMS send from a phonebook entry now works. This one has a new issue in that it doesn't seem to delete an SMS message when I ask it to. Oh well, that's close enough for me. :)