Adafruit Industries just announced their next kit: a SIM card reader. Using the kit, you can read or write any SIM card. You could use this for fun things like recovering deleted contacts and SMS messages. The kit looks like a very straight forward design (based on [Dejan]’s work); the only chip is a hex inverter and the board is powered by a regulated 9V battery. With all through-hole components, it should be easy to assemble. You can talk to it using the board mounted serial port or connect to the extra pin header using an FTDI USB cable just like the Boarduino. The FTDI option is bus powered, so you won’t need the battery. [ladyada] has collected some resources in case you want to learn more about smart cards.
gsm81 Articles
Openmoko FreeRunner Now Available
Openmoko began selling Neo 1973 phones direct to developers last July. The phone is an open source project designed to ease development on mobile platforms. The Neo 1973 has since sold out, but a new Linux phone intended for the mass market has been released, the FreeRunner for ~$399. The screen is 640×480 with 3D acceleration and a 500MHz Samsung processor. The new phone has WiFi and 2.5G GSM support. It has some truly unique features like USB host mode support. You can find the differences between the two phones here. This new phone release should help strengthen the community since average users were discouraged from purchasing the original. Pictures of the phone’s internals and a component diagram can be found on the Openmoko wiki. We wish more manufacturers would explicitly tell us how to get console access.
[via Slashdot]
GSM Alarm
Fresh from the tips line, [Pedro] sent in his GSM alarm. He combined a GSM phone, a motion sensor and BasicX24 controller board. If the detector trips during a set time period, the alarm sends SMS messages to the terminator, er whoever you want. He was kind enough to release the code, but I’d like to see this with a smaller micro-controller board to keep the cost/size down.
SMS Tracking With A GPS GSM Enabled AVR
[Alex] sent in some of his latest work. He interfaced some not so cheap components to give an AVR GPS and GSM I/O. For now it can read the GPS position and send text messages. Thanks to the GPS/GSM module, the schematic is pretty simple – anyone with basic soldering skills and a desire to put a dent in their credit card can probably build this. (Programming the AVR is probably the most difficult task)
