Portable FrontlineSMS ... well almost ;-)

[rbcsoriano]

Hi there!

Been doing some FrontlineSMS again :-)

I got a bunch of Huawie E156/E156c GSM modems. The mobile internet device that telcos here in the Philippines sell for around 1.8-1.9k pesos. Roughly 40-42 USD.

Anyway, they work out of the box with FrontlineSMS :-) The telco providers put the drivers as part of the firmware and is installed once it is plugged in. By the way the presentation here is only for the windows xp. The other great thing about this gadget is it has a slot for a micro sd card, yahoo! So this now is not just a gsm modem but also a storage device, a flash stick/drive. Some of you probably know this already. Moving on... so I decided to put in a 1GB micro sd and installed FrontlineSMS on the gsm modem/flash drive and yes! it works! A portable FrontlineSMS. Now all you need is a compatible computer to plug it in and you can sms blast your project or advocacy :-)

Well almost ...

A few challenges though...

1) Since these are mostly designed for data connection some providers do not allow the SIM to send sms messages, so you may have to change the SIM to a regular one.
2) SIM locked to a particular telco, so if you want to be moving around different telcos you have to have the device unlocked.
3) The internet connection program (part of the firmware) will autorun when plugged in. You can press the shift button when you plug in the device so this does not happen. You can also disable autorun entirely for your winxp system.
4) The FronlineSMS config and data files cannot run off the flash drive. I may be wrong about this though. When you run FrontlineSMS for the 1st time a folder named FrontlineSMS is created on the home directory of the logged in user who installed FrontlineSMS. I guess this is hard wired into the program since there is no option during or after the installation to have this folder elsewhere. A quick fix is to copy this folder onto the flash drive after install and copy it onto the computer before running FrontlineSMS.

That's it! I guess we are a few stones throw away from a FrontlineSMS on stick or a portable FrontlineSMS :-)

Update ...

Installed the mac version of FrontlineSMS on the device and used the same config as the one used by windows and it works. This means that you can now have a windows and mac version on the same device using a single configuration folder.

For the mac you do not need to copy the FrontlineSMS (config and data files) folder to the user home directory, you can do a symlink via the command "ln -s /Volumes/device_name/FrontlineSMS FrontlineSMS" where "device_name" is the mounted name of the storage device. By the way you should be at the user home directory when you issue this command. At a terminal window issue the command "cd ~" and this will bring you the root of the currently logged in users home directory.

I hope this helps :-)

Hey Ken, any possibility of having a FrontlineSMS branded Huawei device with the application on the firmware and data in the micro sd? Just a thought ;-)

Peace.

Bobby

[Ben Whitaker]

Great find Bobby! Cheap, with built in autorun memory, and an SD slot for data!

Will investigate the device, and possibly use it when making tweaks to the FLSMS windows version to make it happier running without needing the configuration files copying over.

If you can find a way to re-write the auto-run FLASH partition that is kicking off the modem's own program, so that it instead runs FLSMS, then that would be the whole game.

One question - is that device price the "subsidised" price when you sign up to a data subscription from the mobile operator, or a no-strings-attached price?

(If you get a "SIM-PIG" you can use any old SIM in the device without worrying about sim-lock by the way)

[rbcsoriano]

Hey hey! Hi Ben!

Yeah those devices are all over the Philippines :-) you can literally buy them off the streets. Bought mine from a street vendor. But this is legal :-) The price is a one time fee no strings attached and no data plan. You top up the sim for internet access.

Yup, looking into how to delete and write stuff into the flash partition. Maybe somebody out there already knows how to do this ;-)

Let me know how the tweak goes for the config/data folder location. I'm keen having FrontlineSMS work with http://portableapps.com. Also looking at having FrontlineSMS work with http://portableapps.com/apps/development/xampp, so we can have a portable version that can have MySQL and all those funky apache and php stuff ;-)

Thanks by the way about the info on sim pig, need to get a bunch of those too ;-)

Peace.

Bobby

[kiwanja]

Hey Bobby

This is really cool - sorry I didn't respond earlier!

Have you made any further progress? I think, once you and Gunner have the developer community up and running, this could be something we could open up for people to tackle.

We've been thinking about this for a while. =)

Ken

[rbcsoriano]

Hiya Ken!

Apologies for the delayed response ;-) So far I got XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html), the portable version working with FrontlineSMS configured with MySQL as the database backend :-) This is for the windows version. So for this one FrontlineSMS and MySQL is not installed on the computer but is on the micro sd card of the huwawei device. The only limitation as mentioned in the previous post is that the FronlineSMS config files still needs to be copied to the computer hard disk.

Also, working on a linux version of this one using http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ particularly using ubuntu 9.04. Linux kernels 2.6.20 and above has already compiles support for the huawei device drivers so this might work. So far I have already installed linux on the micro sd card of the device but unfortunately was unable to boot it so far. My computer does not support booting from usb :-( so need to find one from a friend to see if this works.

Will keep you posted.

Peace.

Bobby

[kiwanja]

Awesome, dude. =)

\o/

[bART Sullivan]

Hi Bobby.

I've been very interested in your posts about the Huawei 156 usb modem because it can also be a connection to the internet in addition to being the phone for FLSMS and it has a memory card to run/store software.

I am using the mac version 1.5.8 of FLSMS but cannot get the internet connection to play nicely with FLSMS. In other words:

- is it possible to connect the the internet using the huawei 156 as well as receive sms on the device in FLSMS. I have to chose one or the other.

Any suggestions would be great

[rbcsoriano]

Hi there Bart :-)

I hope all is well. Unfortunately, you can't do both :-( Once an application is already accessing the device the other applications won't be able to see it. Although I have not tried it with the generic application from huawei, I have only been using the application from the mobile company contained on the device. Hmm ... something to try out when I get back home :-)

Peace.

[bART Sullivan]

What are you up to in the Philippines?

Where is home?

I am working with 25 radio stations across sub saharan Africa researching the role of Radio for providing useful info to Farmers. FLSMS would be part of one of our radio campaigns.

Bart

[Alvin Marcelo]

Hi Bobby,

Got myself a Globe (white) Visibility USB modem which still has the microSD slot. I'd like to run FLSMS on it over _any_ PC.

Is it possible to make it into a liveUSB, boot a minimal Linux distro, and run FLSMS from the liveUSB?

Thanks!

eloy

[Alex Anderson]

Hi Bobby,

Sorry I haven't been following this thread - looks like you've made some great progress. The next release of FrontlineSMS should allow the config files to be located anywhere, so a fully pen-drive-FrontlineSMS should be possible.

Best wishes,

Alex