I have updated the small client for Windows that allows you to receive the notifications from Android-Notifier.
Tag Archive for 'cell'
A small continuation from my last post involving the Android phone and a carputer setup using an Access Point.
Once you have your phone on the wireless network, you can have simple push to call functions in your computer interface. On the android you will need a simple application free from the market called ‘RemoteCall’. This simply opens a web server on your phone which you can use a web browser to connect to and make calls and see your address book.
At the moment I have just copied the URL needed to make a phone call, and used a simple Inet COM object to connect to the URL, just changing the number attached to the end of it. Simple click a button, sends the packet to the phones web server and dials as if you used a web browser.
If you have an android phone like myself, and are looking for a way to connect it to your car computer through some wireless technology to get notified of incoming calls while you are driving you might have been thinking Bluetooth. If you wanted to answer the calls with your computer and talk through the computer with a hands free type setup, you are on the right track and will need to look into the HFP (Hands Free Profile) Bluetooth Profile.
But this article is not about getting incoming call notifications through Bluetooth. I have tried setting up Bluetooth with my carputer setup, and changing Bluetooth stacks, adapters, code, programs and all that, nothing seemed to work how I wanted it to. No programs available would work by just giving me caller information on the screen, that I could program with an available SDK or match my custom interface with some skinning.
Please note that I am not at all interested in routing the call through the computer. I just want to see when somebody is calling, and get notified when an SMS message arrives. A plus would be able to click buttons in my custom interface to call people without typing names or numbers on the phone. Just click, and phone dials.
Looking through the Android Market, there is an application called ‘android-notifier’. This allows you to connect your phone to a wireless network (or Bluetooth network, but we are not going to do anything Bluetooth at the moment) and have the phone send UDP packets to a specific host on the wireless network when events happen on the phone. These events include incoming calls, sms messages, mms messages, battery level, and new voicemail. Perfect.
Now we need to have the phone able to connect to the carputer. Not to hard to think of this one. We need to use an Ad-Hoc network between the phone and the computer. Err, okay no the Android OS (as of this article) cannot connect to an Ad-Hoc network. Shit. Alright we need to have an Access Point of some kind. This is where you can do your own thing, two come to mind. First if we have a compatible wireless adapter in our carputer we can emulate an access point and have the phone connect to it. The software to do this is no longer developed though, but some USB or PCI wireless cards might come with their own SoftAP (Software Access Point).
You will have to do some searching to find which cards SoftAP supported and give it a shot, it’s up to you. I am posting a version I found a while back, not sure if it will work for you, if so great, if not read on.
PCTEL Segue SoftAP | ASUS SoftAP V.2.3.0.23
If a SoftAP does not work for you, or you don’t want to use a wireless adapter in your carputer setup, you can always find a low power physical access point. Yes, a full featured AP and run it off the power supply in your carputer. You will need to make sure it runs off of 12v or 5v and that it only pulls a few amps, preferably 2A max draw. I used an Proxim AP-700, which I had lying around, it’s probably not one you want to just buy out-right. They are not the cheapest. Do some searching, find one in your price range.
We can then run Ethernet from the carputer’s Ethernet port directly to the access point, and give both the computer and the AP a static IP address. Configure the AP to be a DHCP server so your phone (Android again at the moment does not support different IP schemes per wireless network) is dynamic. You may want to assign the MAC of the phone in the AP to always get the same IP. Now that your phone is on the same network as the carputer, you can catch those UDP packets sent from the ‘android-notifier’ application, and have the information shown on the screen.
I am not going to get into the code needed to show the information, I made a small Windows application in VB6 with source code available to show how to open a UDP port on the computer and have it just wait for data, very simple.
Simple Windows program I created really quick in VB6 that will accept simple messages from the Android running the ‘android-notifier‘ application.
Since the author has not written a Windows application yet, I made this small ghetto client to hold off some at the office, and use the code in the CarputerGTP project.
Attached is the program itself, the source code for any interested, and the Microsoft Winsock component. You must place the MSWINSCK.OCX file in your C:\Windows\System32 folder.
Android-Notifier (Program Only) | Android-Notifier (Source Code) | MSWINSCK.ZIP (Winsock Component)
On the android, connect to the wireless network, and choose a custom IP. Key in the IP of the machine running this program. Done.
At the moment I only have it displaying tooltip popups for PING (Testing connection packets), SMS (Test Messages), and RING (Incoming calls).
We recently, (over the course of about a year now) have been moving all of the phone services at my workplace from Verizon over to Sprint. Apparently they had a better deal with free phones for a lot of users. No idea, that’s not my department.
All of the executives would like better phones now of course, so we get to have some neat choices in IT so we can learn how the phones operate to help the executives when they need it. So now we are running around with some Palm Pre devices. Not very…Corporate? You would say and be right, they are not as manageable as the Blackberry with our BES server. But they are neat devices and I’m enjoying it at the moment, although I only use the phone portion most of the time. I’m not big on phones.
Some other items we acquired while moving to Sprint were some AIRAVE devices. I went ahead and installed one in my home, being we had quite a few left over. So far it is working great, full bars
On the right, the white device. I need to run the GPS antenna into the attic, probably do that over the weekend. Sorry for the bad image quality, still don’t have my real camera back yet.
Seems a lot of people were happy when I posted the Pantech UM175 driver on the website because of Verizons mindset. Well I was setting up another card yesterday afternoon and this was a UM150. Well this time I had the CD and decided to just zip the files up and post on the site here.
If the driver helps you, please take the time to leave a quick comment. Thanks.
I can no longer handle the file bandwidth load these two drivers require, but from visitors comments, I have tested and the phone number 000-000-0000 does work to download the drivers. You can find them all on http://vzam.net
So I was asked to visit the CEOs house today to work on a small network problem and get her printer up and running and such. After all this was done, she brings me her son\’s laptop with a Verizon USB Cellular Modem and asks if I can install it for her. I have no real problem doing this so I load up the laptop and it has the software already installed! Alright, so I execute the software and it asks me to plug in the device, I do so and then it asks for a driver.
…What? Alright the software was installed, but there is no driver? Fine. I visit Google, type in Verizon UM175 Driver and all I get are shitty websites trying to get me to buy something, fill out my email, put in a credit card number to download the driver. Hm, no.
Well I come to find out that you can only get this driver directly from Verizon’s Website. Fine. I visit, search for UM175 and it comes up. I click to download and it asks my Operating System, USB or PCMCIA, and then it asks for the Cell Phone number of the card. Why? I just need the fucking driver. So I have to call up the corporate office and speak to our telecommunications guy, I give him the serial and he looks everything up and gives me the phone number, which was nowhere to be found on the USB modem itself.
So I put in the number and the driver downloads and that’s really all, it works fine. My point is, why is it so difficult to get a driver for this device? Phone number to download? Why, do you need to make sure it’s your card to get this generic driver? Odd since even Pantech’s website does not have the driver. Anyway, just to piss anyone off at Verizon or Pantech I have the driver available to anyone here, hopefully you will find this site before you dig around and have to call for help.
I have since removed the driver from my website, too many people needing it, and I didn’t need the overhead bandwidth. You can find it here: http://vzam.net
When asked for the phone number of your device, enter 000-000-0000.