Treo Sync Revisited

Ok, I am one of the last people who gripe about Linux. Seriously, I get infuriated when people come to Linux and give no effort to learn a NEW OS. Yes people, this is a different OS. It is NOT free Windows. If the masses, or at least 7 to 9% of them, would give Linux the same amount of learning time as they give to Apple, I am sure we would have an awesome market share. End of that rant.

Now to my gripe. My gripe is not really Linux, although I initially blamed Linux. Heck, that is the easiest thing to do; right? I have been syncing my Treo 650 with Linux successfully, on and off, for about a year now. I use a usb cable, and sync to both Jpilot and Evolution (via gpilotd).

Friday night, as I prepared to sync my phone, I went through my routine; open a terminal window and issue: tail -f /var/log/messages, so I can see my device get recognized and watch it get assigned. Open Jpilot and get ready to hit the Hotsync button after I initiate the Hotsync on the phone. When you initiate the Hotsync on the phone is when the device gets assigned. Hit Hotsync on the phone....nada. Nothing happens. Do this repeatedly, rinse, repeat. Nothing. WTF. Why can't things just work. Especially the stuff I have already had to hack together, that we then fixed, and no longer have to duct tape together.

When I started playing this sync game I had to write custom udev rules to make Treo get recognized, then the developers fixed that. Yay!

Then you had to have the right device, by watching the /var/log/messages so the apps, (Jpilot and pilotd) knew where to gather the info from. It could be /dev/ttyUSB1 or 3 or 5, depending on how incessantly fast I hit the hotsync button on phone. Device assigned in pairs, the latter is the one that communicates with apps; so assigned 0 and 1, 2 and 3, and so on.

Then the developers fixed that, so by setting the device in the apps as usb: it would communicate with the last assigned of the last pair. NICE. I guess many of us were clicking like lunatics, a practice I also deplore in others.

See, I have a little history with this nonsense. But, right about now, I just want it to work. Friday night it wouldn't work.

I look at my usb connector for the phone; many little pins, maybe a bad connection. Alcohol and cotton ball and clean the contacts on the bottom of the phone. No go. Clean more. Nope. Jiggle the connector. Hold connector to phone applying pressure up, down, left, right. More alcohol (same cotton ball, only had one). It connected. GREAT.

It dropped the connection.

That's it. I am done. No more physical (usb cable) hotsyncs. Time to get bluetooth working. Really working. Completely. Hotsync and all.

Previously, because someone else had questions about bluetooth, (which is usually how and why I get hacking stuff) I got bluetooth file sharing to work. Files from computer, and files to computer. Never tried to get hotsync working. Now it was imperative.

Coming next; Sync with bluetooth and bluetooth file sharing. Stay tuned.

New Year's Day Treo 650 Sync and Bluetooth File Transfer

Pet peeve. Works; stops working. That's how it is with syncing my Treo 650 cellphone with jpilot.

Actually, had it working with my iBook G4 and Gutsy; maybe Hardy, can't remember because I gave up on Ubuntu PPC and the iBook. I do remember that it involved creating a new udev rules file so that the usb cable would be recognized when plugged in. Info here.

The Sunday after the Ubuntu US PA LoCo Intrepid Release Party I helped get someone else's Palm device syncing before I could get my own to sync. All the while acting like it would be a piece of cake and then being shocked as hell when it worked.

The following week I worked on my own sync. Googled. Read. There was a known bug, and a fix had been released. Use the proposed repos; a patch had been added. It works. I sync my Treo. Fix info here.

New Year's Day, January 1, 2009; it's time to sync again. No go. What the heck. It's 8:30 am, I have plenty of time.

It's now noon. No sync. I remember talk in irc of bluetooth. This laptop doesn't have bluetooth, but I do have a dongle. I think I'll give that a whirl.

Bluetooth is recognized. Kensington dongle. Pairing is straight forward. Now Google and learn.
hcitool - hidd - lsping - rfcomm - all good stuff.

Bluetooth File Sharing. It's a Gnome thing. Supposed to allow right click nautilus file send to devices. The nautilus part doesn't work. But, if you use the bluetooth applet and right click the applet you can send files that way. Very nice. Jpilot is great for calendar and phonebook, but for files it was lacking.

In Xubuntu and with Thunar, right click bluetooth send to WORKS.

Ok. Bluetooth is a success, now to the usb cable, the Treo, and the Jpilot sync.

Open a terminal and issue the command: tail -f /var/log/messages

Open another tab in the terminal now. In the new window type: sudo modprobe visor

Now plug in device. Initiate the sync; nothing will happen until the sync is initialized. Switch to the first tab and hopefully you will see your device getting recognized and a device assigned. Note the second device, that's the one you need.

Open Jpilot and set that second device in File - Preferences - Settings - Serial Port.

Start the sync on your DEVICE, then hit sync in Jpilot. You should hear the sync tones.

Now we want to make this permanent, so sudo /etc/modules and add
visor to the end of the file.

So what started as a bummer, ended up being a bonus. Learned a little about bluetooth and got bluetooth file sharing to and from my phone working.

Next phone project: Bluetooth Sync.