So it’s been quite some time since the start of GSoC, and with just over four weeks to go now, I’d like to to show off the stuff that’s working so far. Something screenshot-worthy finally works, hence the update now.
TL;DR : Scroll down for the screenshots.
A short recap of what we’ve been aiming to achieve as a part of this GSoC : We wanted to have the ability to send SMSs through datacards/internet dongles/USB modems and (a limited set of) phones. This is to be implemented in a way that allows users to send SMSs through KDE Telepathy, just like we already can have IM conversations over GTalk or Facebook chat using KTp.
The actual low level SMS functionality is implemented in ModemManager, which has Qt bindings in the form of ModemManagerQt (formerly libmm-qt).
So,
David and Martin suggested that I start off by creating a basic connection manager in TpQt that wouldn’t really interact with a real modem/phone but instead just return hardcoded contacts and messages, before integrating the real bits.
That was obviously a good idea, given the decent amount of time it took me to even get this working perfectly (with ample help from David 🙂 ). Since this dummy CM has been done a while ago, the ModemManager integration is ongoing, to send actual SMSs, to real phone numbers.
We decided to use the old version of ModemManager ( 0.6 ) and MMQt for now (to get things working quickly), since work on upgrading MMQt to support the revamped, latest version of MM (1.0) which was released a few weeks ago, is ongoing.
So far, the connection manager, works with actual modems and sends SMSs. It also scans the received SMSs and adds contacts it finds (senders’ phone numbers).
Of course, screenshots! :
Screenshot of a message sent to a phone
Contacts from my SIM card
So far the only way to add a new account is via the command line (mc-tool), so the next target would be to add a gui plugin for this connection manager for ktp-accounts-kcm, which will allow users to pick a connected modem and create a new “account” to start sending/receiving SMSs.
Cheers.
Till my next update.
#! Anant's blog 
Cool! WOuld be great to integrate this with the GSoC KDE Connect work being done to let the KDE desktop and Android phones share resources.
This is really nice. Typing on a touch screen is such a pain. Do you have a proper list of phones supporting this feature?
I’d second the question about phone support. In fact, I though Bluetooth has something called Message Access Profile that can be used to do SMS, and supported on recent iPhone models. Is this supported?
LoL; where did you get the “telepathy-pintxo” from? “pintxo” is how we refer to usb dongles in the Basque Country; kind of related.
Originally, for lack of a witty name for a modem/SMS CM, I decided upon pintxo as a tribute to the awesome pinchos I ate at Akademy 2013 in Bilbao.
But this (modems being referred to as pintxos) is certainly a happy co-incidence 🙂 (and from now on, perhaps the official explanation of the reason behind the name, hehe). Thanks for the info!
Ah, of course, how did I miss that link. Let’s rename ModemManager itself and call it PintxoManager 🙂
Hi!
Congrats on your work 🙂
I’d like to know if this work was integrated into master and released?
Thanks!
P.S: am new to KDE development so am still looking around the bugzilla and where code is hosted.
Is there any progress or news on this.
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