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…