LoTD: Clean your cell phone
Here’s a good Lesson of The Day: Clean your data off of your cell phones.
I picked up some used c168i cell phones off of ebay to do some integration projects. Hooking up the serial port is just a matter of connecting a 3/32″ audio connector up to a TTL USB serial cable. I was pretty amused by the two hundred SMS messages that were left inside the phones memory. I used a fake – phone number in these samples. Here’s an interesting bit: the phone actually had a pin on the messaging screen! Even without the pin I was able to pull the text messages off the phone. Judging from the content, I’m guessing that this was some kids phone.
+CMGL: 60,"STO SENT","15551111111",,,129,13
O i knew that
+CMGL: 61,"STO SENT","15551111111",,,129,19
Tell her i said hey
+CMGL: 62,"REC READ","15551111111",,"09/01/21,19:03:17-24",129,109
Lol. Im off the phone now. I just got out of the shower. I havent even had time to put my clothes on yet. Lol
Of course, I had to delete every single one with an individual AT+CMGD=62 style command. (62 is the message id).
For those interested in phones with serial ports, here’s how you can hook it up and play with it. The serial port on the c168i is actually a TTL level connection. Perfect for talking to a microcontroller. Soldering the connector is fairly painless, but you’ll want some alligator clip style helping hands and a find tip soldering iron.
Crush everything into the connector sleeve and close it up.
This is the end of a FTDI USB to serial TTL cable. It’s handy for talking to things like boarduinos, and avoids all those repetitive MAX232 circuits. You can get your own from Adafruit. Once I tested the connection, I soldered the wires onto some male header for portability.
The c168i that I bought was locked to AT&T. Since I’ve got some iPhones, I called them up and asked very nicely for the unlock code. They helpfully generated them! To actually use the code, you have to have another service providers sim card. I used T-Mobile because their pay as you go credit expires every three months vs. AT&T’s 30 days.
« New Recipe: Irish Fish soup/chowder
Comments
Pingback from SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies » Blog Archive » Serial communication with cell phones
Time: February 24, 2010, 6:04 am
[...] O’Brien at Biobug.org has been doing some cellphone integration work. He recently picked up some Motorola c168i cellphones from eBay. It turns out there is a serial [...]
Comment from GCL
Time: February 24, 2010, 9:52 am
<>
Amazing!
Who would have really thought of the stuff that roosts on these phones?
According to one of those urban myths (or legends) someone did as you did, bought a bundle of similar phones from eBay, and twiddled with them, and eventually discovered that they were stuffed with disturbingly obscene text messages, and a few photos.
This is before we ended up with the scandals of teenagers sending them by the way.
Comment from higB
Time: February 25, 2010, 5:17 pm
nicely done!
Comment from Looking For Parts
Time: March 14, 2010, 5:04 pm
Where can I get the parts to build this cable? I’m really more of a software guy, but I’d really like to be able to talk to this phone.
Comment from Alvin
Time: March 27, 2010, 12:44 am
hi,
Nice work there. I picked up one of these from ebay to interface it with my microcontroller. I used a audio connector cable and spliced it. Could you please list the baud rates used to talk to the phone? i am not getting a reply from it. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
Alvin
Pingback from How to get Messages off a Cell Phone without the PIN – Hacked Gadgets – DIY Tech Blog
Time: May 1, 2010, 9:54 pm
[...] We often keep important data or personal information on devices that we feel is secure. Well think again. Even though these phones that Will O’Brien picked up had their personal messages locked by PIN simple plugging in a serial cable allowed the messages to be pulled right out. [...]
Pingback from How to get Messages off a Cell Phone without the PIN | The Express Art Blog
Time: May 1, 2010, 10:00 pm
[...] We often keep important data or personal information on devices that we feel is secure. Well think again. Even though these phones that Will O’Brien picked up had their personal messages locked by PIN simple plugging in a serial cable allowed the messages to be pulled right out. [...]
Pingback from How to get Messages off a Cell Phone without the PIN | GadgetsFinder.com
Time: May 2, 2010, 5:00 pm
[...] We often keep important data or personal information on devices that we feel is secure. Well think again. Even though these phones that Will O’Brien picked up had their personal messages locked by PIN simple plugging in a serial cable allowed the messages to be pulled right out. [...]
Comment from scart
Time: May 3, 2010, 7:26 am
is it works on crappy motorola phones only?
Comment from Prabhu
Time: May 11, 2010, 7:28 am
what is this i don’t understand pls explain
Comment from Beau
Time: May 13, 2010, 4:21 am
Will this work on any cellphone? I have a couple of older Sagems and LG’s that are of no use anymore. Wouldn’t mind tearing them down and using in something useful.
Comment from Principles Clothing
Time: June 21, 2010, 9:56 pm
Great tut! Thanks a lot!
Comment from d1don3
Time: July 9, 2010, 8:56 pm
hello?, nice job dude but it does spend much time on it must be,how about some little advice from me?,just do master clear with code 0000.hehehe thats all
Pingback from AT commands sent to Nokia/Motorola/Other Cheap phones via Microcontroller | The Largest Forum Archive
Time: July 13, 2010, 5:01 pm
[...] http://biobug.org/index.php/2010/02/19/lotd-clean-your-cell-phone/ [...]
Pingback from Serial communication with cell phones « Tamil Affection
Time: November 12, 2011, 6:52 pm
[...] alum [Will O'Brien] has been doing some cellphone integration work. He recently picked up some Motorola c168i cellphones from eBay. It turns out there is a serial [...]
Comment from Oxnard Campgrounds
Time: April 9, 2013, 10:07 pm
Because the admin of this web site is working, no uncertainty very quickly it will be well-known, due to
its feature contents.
Comment from The Best Home Gym – Fat Steve’s Fitness
Time: April 17, 2013, 4:48 am
I’m really inspired together with your writing abilities as neatly as with the structure in your weblog. Is this a paid subject or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it is uncommon to look a nice blog like this one nowadays..
Comment from spybubble
Time: April 17, 2013, 7:56 am
hey there and thank you for your information
– I’ve certainly picked up anything new from right here. I did however expertise a few technical points using this website, as I experienced to reload the site a lot of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I am complaining, but sluggish loading instances times will often affect your placement in google and could damage your high quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Well I’m adding this RSS to my email and could look out for a lot more of your
respective interesting content. Ensure that you update this again very soon.
Comment from money lending
Time: April 30, 2013, 7:48 am
Hi! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog.
Is it very difficult to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about making my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Many thanks
Comment from lonelyfisherman.info
Time: May 1, 2013, 9:06 am
No matter if some one searches for his essential thing, therefore he/she wishes to be
available that in detail, so that thing is maintained over here.
Comment from Michael Stephens
Time: February 23, 2010, 11:51 am
Pretty sweet. We have been able to modulate serial on a Droid. Ours isn’t TTL unfortunately (1.2V) but so far successful. http://www.flakelabs.com/index.php/2010/01/jack-video-uploaded/