Writing iCal data to phone calendar using gammu

Normally, I use a paper-based calendar to write down dates of appointments. Since such a calendar isn’t able to notify me about upcoming events, I wanted to use the reminder feature which is built into the calendar of my mobile phone (Nokia 6030).

Because I really hate typing on the phone keyboard, the calendar data needs to be sent to the phone using my computer. I already configured gammu some time ago to connect to my phone. For calendar editing, I use Mozilla Lightning. So the only thing that was left was some shell script to automate the transfer process between computer and phone.

Download the shell script.

Usage: First, you need to put it in your default path (/usr/local/bin for example), make it executable and configure the INFILE variable inside it. Then the “workflow” is as follows:

1. In Thunderbird: Calendar -> Export Calendar -> Filetype: iCalendar (*.ics)
2. In a console: calsync

That’s it! You should now find the corresponding events on your phone’s calendar.

If you want to know how I made my Nokia 6030 talk to my computer, here’s all you need to know: I bought some cheap third-party data cable on eBay and put the following lines in my .gammurc:

[gammu]
port = /dev/ttyUSB0
model = 3100
connection = fbuspl2303

Something lsusb tells me about the cable:

6547:0232 Arkmicro Technologies Inc. ARK3116 Serial

Hope that helps…