Licensing

Pilot Pager V0.1 is Freeware. The author has made every attempt to remove bugs and errors that could destroy data, but no guarantee is implied or provided. Use at your own risk.

Introduction

Pilot Pager is my first attempt at writing software for the 3Com / USR Pilot and PalmPilot series of PDA’s. I bought my PalmPilot Pro in late July of 1997 and was amazed at all the great things it could do for being in such a small package. One of my biggest gripes (and apparently other too) is that USR put a pretty pathetic sound system into the Pilot. The little Piezo speaker is not capable of producing the DTMF tones to dial the telephone. So, we’ve got this great PDA loaded with phone numbers, fax numbers, pager numbers, but we still have to dial them manually. That’s where Pilot Pager comes in!

The idea behind Pilot pager is pretty simple. Use a modem hooked up to the Pilot’s serial port to do all the dialing for us. Although this could be done pretty simply by hand, Pilot Pager will eventually do things like interface with the phonebook app for looking up numbers, etc. It can only send pages, and they must be numeric, NOT alpha! (Sorry, but there’s no way to send alpha pages over over the phone keypad that I know of…)

Setup

Simply install the pager.prc file.

Running the program

Before running the program, make sure you have a modem hooked up to the serial port of the Pilot. I’ve tried to make the program only open the serial port as needed (since this is considered one of the biggest power drains on the Pilot). Tap on the Pilot Pager icon to launch the program.

The user will be presented with 4 entry fields: Pager #, Pin #, Selection, and Message. You’ll note that there are also 2 check boxes next to the Pin # and Selection fields. This is to turn on and off use of the Pin number and menus.

Fields:

Pager # : The number to dial to get the pager. Some people (like me) have a 1-800 number. Whatever number you use to dial somebody’s pager, this is where you put it.

Pin #: Some people’s paging service requires you to enter a pin # to identify who to send the page to. For instance, my service is through SkyTel which uses a generic 1-800 number for all it’s customers. If you usually need to enter a pin # to send a page to the party in question, put it on this line. If no pin number is needed, uncheck the checkbox next to this field.

Selection: Some pager services require you to navigate through a voicemail-like menu system. For instance, since I have an alphanumeric pager the person sending the page is given the option to dial 1 to send a numeric message and a 3 to send a text message. If the party you’re paging has a similar menu system, enter the menu navigation commands here. If no menus are used turn off the checkbox next to this field.

Message: This is where you enter the numeric message you want sent to the user’s pager. I’ve made the field capable of sending up to 40 characters, but most pagers can only handle 12-15 at most. Keep this in mind as the person you’re paging might not be able to see your entire message! Legal characters on this field are: <space> - numbers. Any other characters will not be translated to the phone correctly and will appear garbled (or could even have a detrimental effect on the modem connection!)
 
Once you have everything filled in the way you want it done either hit the send button or choose "Send" from the menus. The modem will come alive, do some initialization and begin dialing, A prompt will appear telling you that the page is being sent. Don’t exit the program until the modem hangs up at the end of the transmission. (I’m working on a way to block until the page is fully sent.) Exiting the program early will close off the serial port and knock out communications.

Other features

Pilot Pager fully supports cut, copy, paste and undo operations on all fields. The standard Graffiti and Keyboard helps are provided too.

The clear button allows the user to clear all fields and start fresh. Keep in mind that there is no way to get back though! Once it’s cleared, it’s gone for good!

The program will remember state upon exit, so the next time you start the app all the data last used will show up again. (so you can repeat you page to those nasty people who never call back when you page them!)

There is an about screen with help information present too.

Conclusion

Well, that’s about it. I know that this program isn’t the most useful thing in the world right now (most of us could dial the phone faster ourselves after looking up the information in the phonebook app.) I wrote this program mainly to teach myself Pilot programming. As a result it’s FAR from finished, but I wanted to get something out for other people to play with.

The paging information is sent to the modem as one long dial command string with various waits and #’s inserted by the software. If you experience any problems with the dialing timing, please e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do.. I only had my own pager to try this with (and it uses both a pin # and a selection) so I might have the timings a little off….

Please see my list of future enhancements below before writing requesting other features.

If you use this thing at all, please drop me some e-mail and let me know!

Thanks.

Also, if you do a lot of raw serial port programming for the Pilot, please e-mail me as I have some questions I need answered!
 
--Mike Kopack

mkopack@avana.net
 

Future Plans

• Interface with the phone book to retrieve phone #’s / pin #’s.
• Store all pin #’s and menu selection options in database.
• Allow user to modify dial waits between fields.
• Hide pin and selection fields when checkboxes are turned off.
• Allow user to cancel page.
• More status dialogs.
• Possibly interface to some sort of external DTMF sound generator module to do the dialing for you without the modem.

Alphanumeric Paging:

 I have received a lot of e-mail asking if I'll be supporting alphanumeric paging with Pilot Pager. I had never really envisioned that capability. Several people have given me some pointers to information on the subject. I'll have to do some investigation into it first.  For now, all I'll say is that I'm looking into the possibility, but there are no promises and definately no timetables (I write Pilot Pager in my free time after work at the expense of having a social life! And I do it to expand my own knowledge, not for pay.)

So, in a nutshell:
"Will you support alphanumeric paging?" - Probably at some point. "When?" - whenever I get the information needed on the protocols, time to do it, and get the rest of the program working the way I want it... alpha support isn't very high on my list at the moment although I do understand that many people would like it. All I can say is that I'll try my best to get it out before the end of the year. I have no idea how much is involved in supporting it...