Sync revisited - Anyone here familiar with XCode on mac?

[numbski]

I've got two thoughts in mind here, but let me post a link before I get rolling:

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...uid/TP40001178

That's apple's sync services overview.

Here's what we know about the A780 (and probably all Moto-Linux phones):

The contacts are stored in a berkley db file, easily parsed out to csv.
By establishing a socket connection to /dev/cu.USBMODEM(001) (whatever block device happens to appear), we can issue an AT command that puts the phone into SyncML mode.

I have phone identification working on my Powerbook by hacking into iSync.app itself, however when I move that code block out into a phone plugin, detection fails. I don't know why this is at the moment.

Presuming that I simply have some sort of structural or typographical error causing detection to fail as a plugin, we can get iSync to detect the A780/E680/i, etc. Once we've done that, then we need to define the synchronization mechanism.

This is the rub for me. I'm wholly unfamiliar with XCode. I'm not even a c-coder. If I could get away with doing all of this in perl, we'd be all set, but to my knowledge, that's not an option.

As I see it, we can do this two ways:

1. Detect the phone.
2. Create a socket on the block device (/dev/cu.USBPHONE(001)
3. Issue the AT command to put it into SyncML mode.
4. Instruct SyncServices on the Mac to begin issuing SyncML requests on our socket. (Presumable the link above will give us a clue as to how this is done.)
5. When the SyncML session closes, close the socket (before which we issue another AT command to revert us back to whatever mode we were in prior...do we know this yet?)

Option 2 probably isn't as clean, but just as feasible:

1. Detect the phone.
2. Put the phone into mass storage mode if it is not there already.
3. Open the berkleyDB directly, and parse it into a multi-dimensional array. (or at worst a temporary csv file)
4. Instruct SyncServices to sync against this array/csv. There is an example of how to sync against a csv in the XCode tools.
5. Write the BerkleyDB file back to the filesystem.
6. Optionally unmount the filesystem/revert the phone to whatever mode it was in prior to mass storage mode if we changed it.

Anyone following me here? As I said, I can do this in perl, and the pseudo code is straightforward, but doing this in C is probably not something I can accomplish myself. Anyone up to the challenge?

[bOOster]

E680I!! won't work.. Probably that mode (cabled SyncML) is completly deleted or disabled.
E680 maybe.

A760/780 still have cabled SyncML option in Syncro... 8O

[numbski]

It's still there.

Get a serial connection in Modem mode.

Type in:

AT+MSYNC

That will put you into SyncML mode.

[gongura]

Has anyone checked this out.

http://the.taoofmac.com/space/HOWTO/...hone%20Plugins

[numbski]

Yup. I can't get the inheritance tree right. We need the syncml family to be inherited, but that seems to wholly belong to the Nokia e-series family, yet we need the motorola family to get detected to begin with.

Unfortunately, I think we have to write a sync services conduit from scratch, but I don't think it would be that much work for someone familiar with XCode to be honest. I've laid out precisely what needs to be done.

Grrr...too bad there's no SyncML perl module out there, otherwise I'd say screw it and just write a cron job to constantly check for the presence of the phone and sync at intervals, or when called upon. :\

No such thing exists though.

[gongura]

are there any updates on this topis yet? still no isync support for the a780 ?

[inijohan]

That'd be cool if my e680i can sync to my Mac ... would love to chip in a bounty for that? What do you all think, Mac users?

[gongura]

inijohan, count me in !

[bwtaylor-tir]

Hi All,

I have been struggling with this for the last couple of days. Currently
the last update of MacOS 10.4.7 with iSync version 2.3 still does not have
any support for the Linux phones.

I have beem able to produce a plugin that will cause iSync to recognize
the A780 with a bit of effort. Attached is my current development
phone plugin. You uncompress this in the ~/Library/PhonePlugins
directory and then things get fun. Note I have yet to be able to get this
to work on USB just Bluetooth only so far.

To get the A780 to be found by iSync. (some of these could be not n
necessary)

1) You configure the A780 as a modem in the bluetooth settings on
the mac. Make sure that the serial port is set to show in the
Network Settings
2) Make sure that the A780 is NOT connected via bluetooth
3) Start iSync on the Mac
4) On the A780 go to the Modem application and set the modem
to bluetooth and hit the "Find Me"
5) At this point you should be able to do an add device and
iSync will allow you to add the device.

A couple of notes. The tiff for the model image in the phoneplugins dir
is not used. I preferred the default and did not clean up the A780 so
something to do.

It sounds like if we could figure out how to make the plugin send a
AT+MSYNC to the phone once it is connected we could get a SyncML
conduit working with the AT+MSYNC as that does start the SyncML mode
for the A780.

Anyone know how to do this??

[inijohan]

Great news! Will try this with my E680i for sure!