Friday, December 21, 2012

Sending SMS from PC to Samsung Galaxy S2 over Bluetooth

I have been a Nokia cellphone user for quite some time and I was fond of Nokia PC suite. Using this, I used to send SMS very quickly from my notebook. The connection between notebook and cellphone was through Bluetooth so I do not have to fiddle around with USB cable to connect / disconnect which will be a pain. Further Nokia PC suite gave all the facilities like, call monitoring (pop up message), contact management etc.

When I switched over Samsung Galaxy S2, I lost such facility. Yes, S2 has Kies & Kies air. Kies, I did not like because of USB cable and it did not support Bluetooth. Kies Air also did not serve the purpose because it called for S2 and Notebook being in the same Wi-Fi network. This also did not work for me as in office I use wired Lan with notebook and that is the networking method provided in office.

My initial search in web & google play gave lot of apps but all were effectively using USB or Wi-Fi. So finally I lost interest and used only the phone touch screen (though the speed is not as that of typing in Notebook keyboard).

Recently I started searching again and I stumbled upon the app "MyphoneExplorer" and finally it gave me the solution I was longing so far. It was not so straightforward and various web sites I searched was not giving a clear message whether it worked or not. So I thought of sharing by experience and wanted to say it works!

The steps I followed
  1. My S2 firmware (just to establish the environment) - IMM76D.XWLPW 
  2. Notebook OS - Windows 7 Ultimate
  3. Enable Bluetooth in Notebook and S2 and pair them (OS will identify some drivers for S2 and still you may get the message driver not found - it is OK . Check in Control Panel as shown in the image below whether S2 is shown or not (ignore the exclamation marks - driver issue??).
  4. Right click on the S2 phone go to properties. You will get a screen as show below. See that In services Tab, Serial port is shown and it is enable with a tick. If not, enable it and apply. Do not worry if your Notebook shows some other COM number instead of COM3, it is ok.
  5. Install "MyPhoneExplorer Client" in S2 - The version I have installed is 1.0.22
  6. Start MyPhoneExplorer Client - See images below. 

  7. Download MyPhoneExplorer, PC side application from www.fjsoft.at/ . I downloaded version 1.8.4
  8. Install the MyPhoneExplorer (should be straight forward, just couple of mouse clicks)
  9. Start the application, goto File->Connect menu and see the below screen shots.
  10. Select "Phone with Google Android OS" and click OK.
  11. Select Bluetooth and click OK. 
  12. Application will auto-detect the COM port and it is connected see below 
  13. That's it, enjoy. Thanks lot to the developer F.J.Wechselberger (yes, I made very small donation to him).

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Online Electronic component selling sites in India

I am giving below the list of various sites I came across selling electronic components in India.



  1. http://thinklabs.in/ --- more of a training institute
  2. http://www.rkelectro.com
  3. http://www.digikey.in/
  4. http://www.singodia.com/  --- bulk selling
  5. http://www.onlinetps.com/ --- looks cost effective, comparatively more items
  6. http://www.nex-robotics.com/ --- looks like the second best
  7. http://aplusindia.net --- voice, melody ICs
  8. http://www.discoverprojects.com
  9. http://www.sunrom.com/ - more items but comparatively priced higher 
  10. http://www.nskelectronics.in   ---  looks cost effective
  11. http://www.bhasha.co.cc/
  12. http://www.simplelabs.co.in/
  13. http://www.rhydolabz.com/   ---- feel costly
  14. http://9circuits.com/products/   ---- minimum
  15. http://www.pearllabs.com/ --- nothing
  16. http://www.catsystems.in/   --- minimum
  17. http://www.embeddedmarket.com/  --- feel costly
  18. http://www.tenettech.com  --- feel costly
  19. http://feemo.in/    --- few items
  20. http://www.thinnkware.com --- few items interesting
  21. http://www.metalmateinc.com --- interesting robots – robots only
  22. http://www.probots.co.in/ ---- ok, making PCB also, more items, cost effective
  23. http://www.kitsnspares.com --- minimum interesting, but you can take part no from  element14 and order here
  24. http://www.tenettech.com
  25. http://shop.extremeelectronics.co.in
  26. http://www.dnatechindia.com – some project boards
  27. http://www.protocentral.com/ - Arduino, robotic related
  28. http://shop.sumeetinstruments.com/ - Arduino, robotic related
  29. http://www.hobby2go.com - more variety of items, price seems to be ok
  30. http://www.ventor.co.in - Contributed by SR
  31. http://www.elevogue.com/ - Contributed by Nilesh
  32. http://www.digibay.in/ - Limited items, reasonable price
  33. http://www.mgsuperlabs.co.in/estore - Contributed by Sneha Agrawal on July 17, 2013
  34. http://www.electroncomponents.com/  - Contributed by soon on July 24, 2013
  35. http://estore.digxtech.com/ - Contributed by Shamnad by on August 23, 2013, reasonable collection and cost, based in Cochin
  36. http://www.roboshop.in/ - Contributed by Nik Smith in Nov 2013, based in Noida
  37. http://www.technofreek.com/ - Limited items, reasonable price, based in Bangalore, contributed by Tech DIY in Nov 2013
  38. www.sonlineshop.com - Reasonable collection & price, based in Coimbatore, contributed by Sampath in Dec 2013
  39. http://hacktronics.co.in/ - Comparatively more items, based in Bangalore, contributed by Priyank Bolia in Jan 2014
  40. www.frugal-labs.com - Limited items, based in Bangalore, contributed by Sreowshi in Mar 2014
  41. www.evelta.com - Limited items, based in Mumbai, added in Jul 2014
  42. www.anandtronics.com - Limited items, based in Chennai, added in Jul 2014
  43. www.componentsindia.com - Limited items, added in Jul 2014

Last updated on 29th July 2014

Disclaimer: Comments are based on my observation. Not intended to merit or demerit any specific site.

Request to visitors of this page : Please update only electronic component selling sites, no computer hardware, training institutes, generic online selling sites. Please update if any of the above link is not working or currently not available.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Hobbyist dream comes true - Oscilloscope Uni-T

What is hobbyist dream? From my point of view, owning an Oscilloscope!! How long you will guess after you make something and finding it not working as intended. You start guessing and keep changing components or the software code.

A friend of mine who went to China on official work found Oscilloscopes at lesser price compared to stalwarts like Agilent, Tektronix Fluke, Yogokawa etc... They are brands like Rigol, ATTEN, Owen, Uni-T etc

Finally I got one Uni-T 100Mhz DSO for US$ 250 (yes in Indian Rupees it is around 14K) in China through him (thus escaping the uncertainty of ordering online/breakage during transit/import duties etc). I will keep sharing my experience with this scope as I play with it. (Yes, my wife is already asking "to blink a LED why Oscilloscope is required?" - Soon I will try to complete atleast few of my hobby projects fully prove??)

Picture

Build quality & Aesthetics
  1. Build quality ok, only thing is power switch is on the top and AC power inlet is in the left side. May not be convening to operate or keep it inside a rack kind of place.
  2. Control button looks like may not withstand rough handling.
  3. Probes seems to be having very thin insulation.
  4. Single Y control for both the channel seems to be a bit of inconvenience.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

USB IO Controller based on PIC18F2550

I wanted a IO controller which should able to connect to a PC and control various external things using PC. What better interface to consider other than USB.

Once USB interface was selected, I wanted a simple uC using which a hobbyist can program, solder etc. Nothing fit my search other than PIC18F2550 - DIP package, 28 pin, ample memory, wide source code availability etc.

Once I selected uC, I wanted it like a command processing engine. All I have to do is send command to it from PC and uC will act on the command. Not only that, it has read / collect / process data from external world and send it to PC.

Having planned this, shall start reinventing the wheel? No... I started searching over internet to find something similar. I found something which close to my wish... It is UBW (USB Bit Whacker).

I wanted build from it and here goes my progress

Step 1 - Make the hardware in general purpose PCB



Step 2 - Make a command reference manual
             https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B3RqTvW97MV9eXJETW9aY0RTaXM/edit
           
            https://github.com/MohanRenganathan/USB-IO-Controller


Sunday, March 11, 2012

Arduino IR Transmitter / Receiver

This is based on the work by Ken Shirriff  @ http://arcfn.com

Circuit













I used a proto shield PCB to solder all the components


I modified the original sketch so that I can send the code from PC through a small application. This is my experiment to control Home appliances from PC.

Electronic component selling sites outside India

Below are the web sites that I came across which not so well know like digikey, element14 etc
  1. http://www.futurlec.com/
  2. http://iteadstudio.com/store/

Interesting web links

Some web links which I came across and found usefull for later reference
  1. Bluetooth module
    1. http://byron76.blogspot.in/
    2. https://mbed.org/

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Arduino + Bluetooth Module

My experiment with Aruduino + Bluetooth. Ordered Bluetooth module at ebay (approx $8). Got it in 8days. Had issues in making it work. First tried making connection in bread board and found soldering wires in the bluetooth module will be difficult. So took a small general purpose PCB and soldered few components.


Arduino working at 5V so for TX (arduino) to RX (Bluetooth) put 1K8 + 3K3 resistor voltage divider. For RX I just put 200R resistor in serial.


Two LEDs connected to PIO8 & PIO9 through 1K resistor to show activity & pairing status. Put Arduino Standard Firmata fw. Set baud rate 38400 in Firmata thinking bluetooth module default baud rate is 38400 (this is what I got from the bluetooth module PDF file).

Tried connecting from my Samsung Galaxy SII using Arduino Commander app. No response. Ultimately need to use scope to find out that bluetooth module default baud rate is 9600. Once I changed to this baud rate in Standard Firmata fw, I could connect to Arduino and communicate.

What is further? - Going to make this as IR transmitter to control TV etc