https://ask.metaenhancement.com/320921/Software-IR-fax-interceptionSoftware IR fax interception...
April 7, 2018 7:30 AM Subscribe
This is a long shot. I want to turn a computer with an IR interface into something that will accept faxes beamed from a twenty-year old palmtop that still thinks IR Fax rules the roost and that if this email takes off, it will never replace it, or be used for junk.
I have a computer with an IR interface. I have an old palmtop which can beam faxes over IR (it used to send them to Nokia and Ericcson phones, if you can recall).
I would like to find a software means to make the PC/Linux IR interface pretend to be a modem, like on one of those phones, received a fax beamed from the palmtop, then ignore the phone number on it and forward it on as a bitmap or PDF to an email address (or better still, save it to a disk location).
Is this kind of stuff possible in our post-fax era?
Is this also possible for €cheap or $free?
(I avoided telephony acronyms and software as long as possible... )
posted by davemee to Technology (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
"IrDa" is the keyword you want to search here. How comfortable are you doing some software development? I'm guessing at least somewhat, if you're running Linux. This is an interesting question so I did some searching and ended up on the Linux Infrared HOWTO. There's also reference to a package in Ubuntu 8.x, but who knows if that's still in modern Unix. Anyhow basic IrDa support just gets you the ability to receive the data, then you have to send it to something that can reconstruct it as a document. I wasn't able to find anything specific to your use-case, and printing is not my area of expertise, but I'm sure that the raw parts exist to bolt together a solution if you ask the right questions.
posted by Alterscape at 7:45 AM on April 7, 2018
Here's a Python package, which as it says, just lets you treat the IR interface as a regular network socket. Installing (on Linux) should hopefully be as easy as "pip install irda", then you can just use it in all your scripts.
It seems like people in the Arduino world use something called IRLib2 to automatically detect and decode different infrared protocols. This may be intended more for TV remotes, though, and I'm not sure if they include support for whatever bizarre system is used to send faxes to a giant 3-foot-antenna cell phone.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:43 AM on April 7, 2018
if you have the particular brand of the palmtop, it might help in searching for what exactly the protocol is.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:52 AM on April 7, 2018
Best answer: Sorry to triple-post, but I just noticed the "Psion" tag. there's something called plptools (mentioned in the Linux IrDA guide posted by Alterscape, actually).
I can't find any documentation yet, but one of the commits in the repository mentions a working IrDA connection with a Psion.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:00 AM on April 7, 2018
Response by poster: Thanks for the advice, all. I've kinda gone round the houses trying to make this sensible (even to the point of trying to resurrect a 20-year old Canon BJC50 and scanning solution).
A lot changes with technology in 20 years. Things that were sensible once are now non-existent, replaced with alternatives that use entirely different models and toolchains. It seems intercepting modem emulation over IR would require some serious coding work (or expensive commercial software), and even getting IR working these days (as anything other than a TV remote control) is an ordeal.
The PLP packages look like they may be a sensible start and a possible bridge to a Dropbox folder - though then there's the whole toolchain issue of document conversion from a 20-year old proprietary format to chew through. Looks like plptools can be apt-gotten on Ubuntu, which could be a number of hoops resolved at once. I'll post back with findings if one of the dwindling number of Psion users stumbles across this post!
Thanks all and well done on the intention inference from vogon_poet :)
posted by davemee at 2:06 AM on April 8, 2018
Response by poster: ... okay, PLP installs easily, both on debian and raspbian.
Hmm, dependant on IRDA. Hmm, more dependant on LIRC.
Hmm, looks like my gifted USB IRDA adapter picks up, but isn't fully supported by a layer up the stack for being initialised when an IR device talks to it.
Guess it's time to start hunting down potentially compatible devices!
(Tried again on Windows, on Win10 it's seemingly impossible to get a working IRDA driver and to bridge it to a PDF writer. Unsurprised meh)
posted by davemee at 11:23 AM on April 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
