Using your Sony Ericsson T310 with Linux and IrDA

This document features all the things i found out about my Sony Ericsson 
T310 and how it can be used with a linux box. i hope, this will be useful 
for somebody. Of course there is no guarantee that anything here works for
you as well, but it may make your search easier.

The newest version of this file can be found at
http://xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at/amnenion/T310_linux.txt
Feedback is welcome: w.haas at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at

Hardware:
Sony Ericsson T310 ;-)
IrDa (infrared) Transceiver
There's also the possibility of using a cable, however i do not have one, 
so the following deals only with IrDA.

Software:
Mobile Phone:
Firmware R3B003 (or later) for the T310
To find out which firmware is installed on your phone, see:
http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=35026&forum=2#post479087

Your phone may have installed an older firmware, which brought me into
trouble with ObexFTP (for link, see later) because the phone just didn't 
react to connections any more. Getting the latest firmware (R3B003) solved
the problems for me.

Linux (either version 2.4.22 or a later version or patching might be 
necessary for versions below 2.4.22, see later):
There seem to be some problems with Ericsson phones and IrDA (at least
when using gsmlib (for link, see later), Openobex applications might 
work), search for "Ericsson" at
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/IrDA.html
for details. 

If you don't care about details and just want it to work:
just add these two lines
# echo 1000 > /proc/sys/net/irda/min_tx_turn_time
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_tx_window
to a script run at boot time on your box (/etc/conf.d/local.start,
/etc/init.d/boot.local, /etc/rc.d/rc.local or whatever).

You need to have Linux 2.4.22 (or later) or patch your kernel to do that.
More information can be found at 
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/IrDA.html.

irda-utils
http://irda.sf.net
Needs to be installed and set up for working.  The setup depends on 
the type of your IrDA device.

openobex-1.0.1
http://openobex.sourceforge.net/
OpenOBEX is an implementation of the OBEX protocol. You need it to 
transfer images, vcards, melodies, etc. 

Now that all the basic libraries are installed it finally is time to 
transfer files from and to the phone :-)

IrCP
http://openobex.sourceforge.net/download.html
IrCP can be used to send files to your T310 (don't forget to activate IR
on both sides). It also has a mode to receive files from your phone. 
Everything that can be sent via IR from some menu of your phone can be 
transferred. This includes pictures, melodies and phonebook entries.
Unluckily IrCP writes all the files it receives to /, so you need to be
root to use it. There seems to be little development going on with this
project, therefore it is doubtable if there will be a version in which
this problem will be fixed.

Send something from your phone (a picture, vcard or melody) via IR and
receive it with:
# ircp -r 
Waiting for incoming connection
Incoming connection
Receiving foo.gif...done
Disconnecting

Sending is as well possible:
# ircp foo.mid 
Connecting...done
Sending foo.mid...done
Disconnecting...done

Note: Sending files to the phone will usually fail the first time. However
it works when tried a second time. At the moment i chose to ignore this
problem. This applies to IrCP, irobex_palm3 and ObexFTP. If someone finds
a solution, i'd be happy to know it.

irobex_palm3
http://openobex.sourceforge.net/download.html
irobex_palm3 is part of the openobex-apps package and though it is actually
designed for use with palm-pdas, it can send and receive files just as IrCP.
Received files are written to /tmp/ which is slightly better than having 
them in / as you can execute it as non-root user as well. Unluckily there 
seems to be little development going on here, too.

receiving files:
# irobex_palm3   
Send and receive files to Palm3
Waiting for files

..............Filename = foo.gif
Wrote /tmp/foo.gif (7508 bytes)

sending files:
irobex_palm3 bar.gif 
Send and receive files to Palm3

name=bar.gif, size=2010
....

PUT successful

obexftp-0.10.4 (Note: not released yet!)
ObexFTP can send files to your T310 just as IrCP and irobex_palm3:
# obexftp -p foo.bar.
Receiving files works differently from the other two applications.
There is no receive mode, but you can also tell your phone which files
to transfer to your box.
At the moment there is no method known to browse the directory-content
of the phone which makes it a bit difficult to  know what to load down.

Fortunately, here 
(http://triq.net/obexftp/doc/README.ericsson.html) is a little list of
files.

# obexftp -g telecom/pb.vcf
loads your whole phonebook from the phone (and actually writes it to the
actual working directory).

Now you can edit it with your preferred editor and send it back.

# obexftp -k telecom/pb.vcf  
deletes the old phonebook (do this at your own risk).

# obexftp -p pb.vcf 
sends your new phonebook to the phone. When sending the whole phonebook 
(or just one entry) or some calendar-related information, the T310 doesn't
care about filenames, just the ending (".vcf") is important in that case.

this is quite funny:
from telecom/devinfo.txt:
MOD:T300
HW-VERSION:proto
It would be interesting to know if there are other users, who's phones are
still convinced to be prototypes of the T300 series ;-)

Conclusion:
There is no difference whether you send send your files to your phone with 
ObexFTP, IrCP or irobex_palm3.
As far as I know there is no possibility to send the whole phonebook or the
whole calendar via any send command in any menu of the T310 which makes
obexftp very useful. On the other hand there is no known way (yet) to pull
pictures and sounds off the phone with obexftp. This can only be achieved
by using IrCP, irobex_palm3 or obexftp in receive mode.

gsmlib-1.10
gsmlib offers a wide spectrum of applications, at the moment i only used
gsmsmsstore (and possibly may never need more of the applications).

gsmsmsstore can be used to copy short messages from and to your phone. 
the t310 offers 2 kinds of storage: the store on the sim card (SM) and 
the store in your phone (ME). if you are in the text-message menu
of your phone, you can distinguish between a message saved in your phone
and one saved on your SIM-card by the symbols. There's also an option 
to save the message from the phone's memory onto your sim-card.

You can load down your stored messages with the command:
# gsmsmsstore --source /dev/mobilephone --baudrate 57600 -l --store ME
it shows the messages stored on the phone-memory (ME).

Note: On my system /dev/mobilephone is a symlink to /dev/ircomm0. 
It might be necessary to create a symlink to your IR-device respectively
use its name (whatever it might be).

# gsmsmsstore --source /dev/mobilephone --baudrate 57600 -l --store SM
shows the messages stored on your sim card.

# gsmsmsstore --source /dev/mobilephone --baudrate 57600 --store ME --backup \
# --destination /path/to/stored-messages
makes a backup of all messages stored on the phone's memory. once
you delete a message from your phone, it still won't be deleted from the
stored-messages on your disk the next time you issue this command,
only new messages will be added to your stored-messages. 
This is great for archiving your short messages.

# gsmsmsstore --source /path/to/stored-messages -l
shows you all the messages stored in your archive.

Note:
doesn't work under certain circumstances, i sent a mail about this
to the gsmlib-devel-list:
http://lists.over.net/pipermail/gsmlib-devel/2003-October/thread.html#532