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Symbian DevZone - SwitchMe - Solving the inappropriate ringing problem?
by Richard Bloor, April 14, 2003
We all know how annoying it is when a mobile phone goes off in the middle of a film or play, and usually at the point where it really spoils the tension or drama. A team of students at Syracuse University is attempting to solve this problem as part of their Capstone project using a Nokia 7650 application and custom developed Bluetooth transceiver.
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As you might expect, I often ramble through the Internet looking for interesting things going on around the Symbian OS community. This was how I came across SwitchMe, a project being undertaken by a group of students at Syracuse University as part of their final year Capstone design project.
Brian Tuman, one of the four students on the team explained the motivation behind the project. “Like many people I have been annoyed by mobile phones going off in all sorts of inappropriate places such as movies, restaurants, classrooms, and libraries. With technologies like Bluetooth and the Symbian OS appearing in mobile phones this started me thinking about whether this sort of short range wireless communication could be used to solve the problem.”
After considering the problem, Brian and his colleagues Gouree Bhave, Mike Woodruff and Peter Nofelt came up with a solution involving a Bluetooth transceiver and an application which would run on a Bluetooth enabled smartphone. The smartphone application would recognize a signal from the transceiver when it was within range of the device and then switch the phone’s profile to one suitable for the environment; silent mode. When the smartphone then left the range of the transceiver the software would then restore the original profile settings. So SwitchMe was born.
Having developed the concept for their project the next challenge was to determine what hardware they could use. They decided to develop the Bluetooth transceiver in two stages, first using a development kit connected to a PC and then later converting the transceiver into a self-contained unit. The self-contained unit would consist of a processor running the embedded OS, uClinux, connected to a Bluetooth card obtained from a company named StoneStreet One.
The criteria for selecting the phone were that it needed to have a programmable interface, Bluetooth capability and ideally a PC emulator for software development. Their research led them to either the Nokia 7650 or Sony Ericsson P800. Only the Nokia 7650 was on the market when they started the project, neither phone was available in the US market at the time they were evaluating development options, worse the Nokia 7650 was only capable of working in Europe and Asia. A little research determined that they could use the Nokia 7650 with a local SIM, although it would obviously not work as a phone. There was also the possibility of the Nokia 3650 being available before they needed to demonstrate the final project. As both these phones used Series 60 the team decided to go ahead and build the application using the Nokia Series 60 SDK.
Although the Symbian OS was a new technology to everyone on the team they found the development process relatively straightforward. Brian commented that “We discovered that Nokia provide a nice developer center, which we frequently relied on and the SDK documentation provided good examples that we used to help formulate our application. Also we found websites popping up that contained valuable information which also help us learn about using the Symbian OS.”
However they did encounter a significant problem as the Series 60 PC emulator was not able to work with a PC Bluetooth card. This meant they initially focused just on the GUI development, but the team were left unsure about whether the concept would work because they had no direct way of verifying it. So eventually they took the plunge and bought a Nokia 7650 from India so they could move on with the development of the Bluetooth communication and profile access.
One of the main problems they had to find a solution to early in the development was how the system would work given the in-built Bluetooth security. Initially they simply set the Bluetooth transceiver as a paired device in the phone. This was clearly not suitable for a working solution and after some testing and research they determined that by coding the transceiver software to explicitly set that Authentication was not required by the device this issue could be overcome. With the user no longer having to manually accept the connection from the transceiver the solution was becoming more practical.
As already mentioned the team also paid close attention to the software interface. Bearing in mind that the range of users for this type of phone would be considerable they realized that the interface needed to be easy to use while providing access to advanced control options for more confident users. “We wanted the SwitchMe application to be easy to use. I believe that if the interface does not allow the user to use the functionality easily that functionality should not be part of the application” said Brian “but the Series 60 interface is very clean and the SwitchMe application takes advantage of this to make the application very easy to use. Also, while developing the application, I tried to keep in mind that the user would probably want to change the settings of the SwitchMe application by just pressing one or two buttons because they would almost certainly be doing something else that had their full attention. So, I tried to make the menu usage very compact, so the settings could easily be changed using the two softkey buttons on the phone.”
They now have the concept working. They have completed the SwitchMe wrapper application for the phone. When the phone turns on it loads the application and if the user has it enabled, a SwitchMe service is registered in the Bluetooth database. The transceiver recognizes the service on the phone and, when it does, a signal is sent to the phone. The phone recognizes the signal and switches the profile to silent or back to the saved profile.
The first real test of the system came on April 12th with the Syracuse University Open House. With the help of three additional Nokia 3650’s on loan from Nokia the team were able to successfully demonstrate their system. The project seems to have been received well and it was given the "Best Project" award by the Syracuse chapter of IEEE.
SwitchMe is a long way from being a commercial reality. For SwitchMe to work as a commercial solution a number of problems would need to be overcome not least of these would be the need for an industry wide buy-in, something which, even if there is interest, will be some way off. However, it is an interesting idea that may someday lead to a practical solution. Even so the technology the SwitchMe team have developed, the ability to control the function of a device based on its proximity to a Bluetooth transceiver, could have a number of practical applications. It could be used in creating an application that could provide a guided tour of a museum or historical place, for example, with text, audio and images being provided for the location the visitor is in. Given the professionalism which Brian and his team have applied to this project I certainly hope they have the opportunity to look at practical applications of their technology in the future.
Brian has created a web site to track the progress of the SwitchMe project, which you can find at www.switchme.info.
About the WDN Symbian Editor, Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor is a freelance writer and editor with 18 years experience in the IT industry as a developer, analyst and latterly Project Manager with a particularly focus on software testing. Richard has been involved with the Symbian OS since 1995 and has been writing about it for the last 3 years.
Richard is also an associate with System Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at symbian@wirelessdevnet.com.
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