Uni Fk. II Informatik theoretica CSD ~eagle stir4200

SigmaTel 4200 USB IrDA Dongle and Linux

On this page:

• Intro
• Kernel Module
• Starting IrDA support via hotplug
• Working with your mobile phone
• Disclaimer

1 Intro

Via eBay I got an USB IrDA dongle and fortunately it was no big deal to get it running with my SuSE Linux box. Now I'm using it to backup the phone book of my Siemens S35i mobile phone and to put a nice self-drawn provider logo on it from time to time. If you are interested on how to get this working you can find it on this page.

2 Kernel Module

The following works with kernel 2.4.x. For kernel 2.6.x the module seems to be included (at least SuSE Linux 9.1 includes the module for the 2.6.x kernel).

Using google some day I found the kernel module that I'm using. I'm not sure, but I think I downloaded the module that I'm using from here: http://wetlogic.net/stewart/stir4200/ . I found it via tuxmobile: http://tuxmobile.org/ir_misc.html . But you can also find my local copy here.

Compile the module as usual and copy it to a "save" location in your /lib/modules directory tree. Don't forget the depmod so that the module is known to be responsible for your IrDA adapter.

3 Starting IrDA support via hotplug

Once you compiled and installed your kernel module it should be loaded automatically once you plug-in the dongle the first time. Now you have to tell your machine to initialize the IrDA subsystem. In SuSE distro's this reacting on USB events is usually done via hotplug

This is very easy, too: Simply let hotplug know which script to start when plugging in the USB adapter with the appropriate .usermap-file and with that script start or stop the IrDA subsystem.

/etc/hotplug/usb/usbirda
#!/bin/bash

if [ -x /usr/sbin/rcirda ]; then
	if [ "${ACTION}" = "add" ]; then
		/usr/sbin/rcirda start && exit 0
	else
		/usr/sbin/rcirda stop && exit 0
	fi
fi

You can also download this as a .tar-archive.

/usr/sbin/rcirda is a link to the script /etc/init.d/irda that is installed by SuSE with the irda-package. It will do a simple irattach-command:

/usr/sbin/irattach ${IRDA_PORT} -s >/dev/null

If you are using the SuSE script you should be sure that IrDA is configured to use the module you installed and not a serial port:

/etc/sysconfig/irda
## Path:        Hardware/IrDA
## Description: Settings for the infraread device
## Type:        string("",/dev/ttyS1)
## Default:     /dev/ttyS1
#
...
#
#IRDA_PORT=/dev/ttyS1
IRDA_PORT=irda0

4 Working with your mobile phone

I'm using the tool scmxx to talk to my Siemens S35i mobile phone. It will also work with the S45 series, but I had problems getting it running with an S55. But the S55 works with kandy, the very puristic KDE application.

For the scmxx there exists a GTK GUI fronend named gscmxx. Sometimes it fails to recognize my phone at startup but a restart always worked.

5 Disclaimer

No warranty! All information I'm giving here is provided without any guarantee. I hope it is useful (please let me know if so), but I will not be responsible for any harm happening to someone or something due to this description.