Comment by tommys | November 7, 2007 | 12:58 pm

Hi,
I wonder about the ported utilities. From where have they been ported? Is the source available somewhere?
/Tommy

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 7, 2007 | 1:02 pm

Ported stuff is just open source material like wget and ffmpeg that have been ported to the iPhone by myself and others.

Comment by NetMage | November 7, 2007 | 5:00 pm

Since I don’t (quite) have the toolchain up, why not write a native app / Installer package to automate the afc2 addition to the Services.plist?

Comment by mmoore2084 | November 7, 2007 | 8:11 pm

Was wondering if it would be possible to have a voice note to be saved and used as a ringtone using the sendsong app?

Comment by miahill9 | November 8, 2007 | 8:53 am

Source code for snap2vid? I think i could learn a lot from this program. Thanks to your pdf I was able to get started making some of my own programs, all be it simple, think scream when dropped! If you don’t share the source to that program, may be a few changes would help make it better, options for choosing the number of shots to take, and choosing the time between. (longer times as oppose to shorter) Keep up the great work!

Comment by docpool | November 8, 2007 | 9:18 am

Today I got trouble with ip-print. The service whatsmyip… doesn’t respond. There should be another solution to get the extern IP. Probably based on nslookup or so.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 8, 2007 | 10:48 am

You can create custom ringtones with voice notes but it involves converting the amr file to mp3, syncing it to your computer, and then using SendSong. So–not a trivial matter.

I just tested out ip-print this morning and it worked fine. Maybe a server interruption?

Comment by Kitesurf | November 8, 2007 | 10:48 am

Hi Erica,
When I was in Tiger I made an Application in Automator to check for email every 15min. because that’s the only way I can filter my junk mail and not have it in my iPhone. Now that I have Leopard that application no longer works and when I try to replicate it in the new Automator I just can’t seem to do it because the “Loop” ( in Automator) does not give you the option of time. You are the first person I thought of to help me solve my problem. Hope it makes sense what I’m trying to explain.

Blue skies!!
from Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Jerry

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 8, 2007 | 10:49 am

Snap2vid’s 1-2 fps limitation made it a dead end in my books. I didn’t bother developing it any further.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 8, 2007 | 10:51 am

I’m not really sure why your Automator action doesn’t work–can’t you just set your mail program to check for email every 15 minutes to do the filtering? I know I can do that with Eudora

Comment by exiledsurfer | November 8, 2007 | 11:07 am

hey erica,

we just finished releasing an iphone to midi bridge app called i3L last week, and will be releasing an updated version soon.

in any case, as i started looing further into your filesend, filecatch and various bonjour proof of concept apps in the hope that i could screen capture the stream from the iphone’s camera, i found to my dissapointment that all of these bonjour based apps tell the iphone to do something and then to send it to the desktop.

so i am wondering, since i know that ichat/AV works via bonjour on the local network, what is the limitation in the current codebase that doesnt allow to just send the iphone’s camera to the desktop rather than to (or in addition to) the iphone’s screen?

and, do you see any way to grab the camera’s input and stream ti to the desktop so that it could simply be captured using a screen capture utility?

btw, you ROCK

michael

Comment by delt23 | November 8, 2007 | 1:21 pm

Great site and great work on the utlities.

I have an excellent suggestion for an app. I didn’t know where else to add this.

An iPhone app that can take attachments from Mail e-mails on the iPhone and ask you where you would like to save them. This way, you could e-mail yourself a zip file, save it to a folder, and unzip it. Or e-mail yourself a document (rom, mp3, ringtone, pdf), save it to a folder, and then view or do something with that file with another program.

This is a much better way of sending files than using a file transfer service. This would also work well with sendsong or sendpic or sendfile because those use e-mail to send files. You could then “getfile” and do something with it.

Comment by miahill9 | November 8, 2007 | 6:23 pm

Ya i would area snap2vid is dead as far as video goes, but a command line camera is quite fun, for example I would like to run cron job that would take a picture every 30 minutes to document my day. Snap2vid seams to be the closest i can find to a command line cam. Any suggestions? can you email me the source? You are doing great stuff keep it up!

Comment by delt23 | November 9, 2007 | 4:31 am

I also think you should adjust the interface for voicenotes and make it similar to voicemail. I can botch up some base designs for you if you like.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 9, 2007 | 2:44 pm

Hmm… I probably can write “snapapic” from the command-line. I’m adding this to my ttd list.

Comment by miahill9 | November 9, 2007 | 5:39 pm

And the people rejoice!!! Left a little something for erica@mindspring.com yesterday. I know it doesn’t compare to that work you do.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 9, 2007 | 5:57 pm

Miahill9: Thank you so much! I haven’t gotten any email and don’t see anything in the spam folder–but I’ll check into it when I get back to work on Sunday. Regardless, a huge, huge thank you to you!

Comment by agalemiri | November 11, 2007 | 10:56 am

Question: When I finish to install applications, there is a message that indicate that I must create a path /var/… something. I don’t know how to make this process. Can someone help me in this issue?
Thank you.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 11, 2007 | 11:07 am

In Unix, adding a folder to you path means you don’t have to type out the entire path name when you want to run a program.

So instead of running /var/root/bin/snap, you can just type snap.

Much easier.

Check out any intro UNIX primer for details

Comment by element | November 11, 2007 | 6:19 pm

Hi all, can somebody help me ? everytime I try to rum snap/snap2album I get this error:
2007-11-11 22:17:29.032 snap[73:d03] Couldn’t register with bootstrap server unknown error code (0×44f); failing…
73: ABORT: Unable to register “UnknownPurpleApp” port, 1103 unknown error code
zsh: abort snap test
anyone knows why does it happen ? and how can I fix it ? Is there any other way to take screenshots in windows ?

Thanks…

Comment by element | November 11, 2007 | 6:21 pm

Sorry, forgot to say that I can run other commands like cal, for example.

Comment by sireB | November 12, 2007 | 12:19 am

Ok, I know this is more of a wish, but I think it would be pretty awesome if you ported wget. It would be great not to have to connect my phone everytime I need a file.

Comment by sireB | November 12, 2007 | 12:26 am

Ohhh, nevermind. I just saw “”ported utilities” AWESOME

Comment by Lloyd Braun | November 12, 2007 | 4:06 pm

Erica,

i have some purely selfish ideas that I’m hoping will be able to be developed come Feb with the “real” SDK. Of course I’m no developer…

Would you ever stoop as low as working for “gasp” money?

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 12, 2007 | 4:09 pm

You can only run one command-line (i.e. purple) app at a time. Quit Dock.

Comment by mike | November 13, 2007 | 4:16 am

Hi Erica,
I installed some of your apps in my iPod Touch today. After installing the Widgets, my Wallpaper disappeared. Now, everytime I try to set a new Wallpaper, nothing happens, it is always a black screen as wallpaper.
How can I change that?
Thank you,
Mike

Comment by mike | November 13, 2007 | 4:24 am

Hi Erica,

I didn’t realize my iPod Touch was connected and when it is connected, it doesn’t show the wallpaper. Sorry about that!
Thanks,

Mike

Comment by mike | November 13, 2007 | 4:59 am

Hi Erica,
It’s me again! I have two more questions:
1) Do you have a scientific calculator app?
2) Do you have an app that allows me to change the order of my iPod Touch icons?
Thanks!
Mike

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 13, 2007 | 8:51 am

Widgets do not affect your wallpaper. Honest!

No scientific calculator and I’m working on the order thing with XLaunch

Comment by miahill9 | November 14, 2007 | 10:20 pm

Erica, i made snap2pic work!! thanks for your help, it is quite sloppy and rough, but it works!

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 15, 2007 | 8:01 am

Miahill: is that on the iPod touch? Tell me more

Comment by tones | November 16, 2007 | 4:30 am

Hi Erica

This is probably not the right place to post this, apologies. I was wondering whether you could look into making a utility for that oh so wanted downloading from safari. I have a couple of ides of how it could work but no skill to do it. I am trying to think of solutions that stay away from hacking safari.app

1) In safari, navigate to the mp3 file you wish to download (creative commons of course). Stop it playing and it remains at the url.
2) Use something similar to dock.app, maybe a starburst in the lower left. Swipe from bottom corner and the utility kicks into action.
3) Utility grabs the url, then uses it with wget to download to /Media

If it is not currently possible to get at the url, another method is to create a Downloads folder in Safari bookmarks, bookmark the url, then invoke the utility. It will scan the Downloads folder, extract the links, use wget.

Best wishes, tones

PS. How does one install wget from the ported utilities? I have bsd and terminal-vt100 so would at the very least like to play around downloading manually.

Comment by tones | November 16, 2007 | 9:04 am

Quick follow up (delete these two posts if you wish btw and please point me to a better place to hang about and query/discuss with devs):

Whether by an app or a shell script not too sure, but further thoughts on method 2, using Safari Bookmarks to manage downloads:

1) Bookmark a page which contains mp3 links in a ‘MobileDownloads’ folder
2) Back in sprinbaord, open up the app/script which reads bookmarks.plist for keys in MobileDownloads and saves it as a txt file, 1 line for each page that was bookmarked
3) wget [-r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off -i /tmp/mobiledownloads.txt] > /Media
4) Aside: Can the downloads be placed in iTunes Store downloads so that they get synced back up into main machine?

T.

Comment by Stan | November 16, 2007 | 11:13 am

Hi Erica
As a medical professional i rely on my cell phone as a pager. What we need in our vertical market is a reminder or nag feature for SMS text messages. When i get a page about a patient in emerg, it comes from the answering service as a text SMS. If i miss the initial “beep”, i sometimes don’t realize i have a message waiting. I need to be able to set the iPhone to beep repeatedly at 1-3 minute intervals as long as there is an unread SMS text. Is this possible to program?

Stan

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 20, 2007 | 12:51 pm

Tony: Thanks for the feedback. I’mnot sure I have the time to write such a utility. You can get wget from the ftp software repository on this site. Look for “Ported Utilities”

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 20, 2007 | 12:53 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, Stan. I’ll try to brainstorm about how this might be done–but no promises. I’mnot sure there’s an easy answer for SMS nagging. Maybe you should submit a feature request to Apple?

Comment by kyrios | November 21, 2007 | 11:52 am

Hi Erica,

first of all: BIG BIG Thanks to you! You realy do amazing work. Is there a way to donate? Couldn’t find :/

Here is a direct feature/port request:

truss or strace on the iPhone. This would help alot in “debugging” closed source applications. For example I’d like to find out if safari uses any etc/hosts file or something like that. I think I don’t have to explain the advantage of having strace/truss to you.

Do you think this would be an easy port?

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 21, 2007 | 12:16 pm

Core over at wickedpsyched is the person to contact regarding truss/strace stuff.

As for donating, you can paypal to erica@mindspring.com

Thank you for your support! It really helps me justify doing all this on my spare time.

Comment by abu | November 23, 2007 | 3:40 pm

Hi Erica,
first of all many thanks for all your work and the posts at TUAW!

I’m programming the ml_ipod plugin for Winamp, and I’d like to make it work with the iPhone. We do it via ssh. Two questions:

Do you know a way to temporarily disable autolock from the commandline? While syncing music and video, autolock is a bad idea, but I don’t want to force people to turn it off by hand.

Second: Is it possible to create native iPhone apps on a Windows PC or Solaris or Linux? That’s all I have, no Mac

Thanks!

Comment by fourex | November 24, 2007 | 9:35 am

Hi, I am a newby here. For the “voice notes” is there anything else I need to load on the iphone to get this working? will the program automatically load on the iphone? And finally will this have any effect on compatibility with apple synching at all?

Thanks for your assistance.

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 26, 2007 | 10:44 am

VoiceNotes does not require any other software

Comment by abu | November 27, 2007 | 5:50 am

Hi Erica, it’s me again. Sorry if I’m nagging, but did you see my comment above? Just wondering, ’cause you answered the one by fourex only…
Thanks a lot!

Comment by macsrck | November 27, 2007 | 6:20 pm

Erica,
I’m sorta a noob when it comes to this kinda stuff but I thought you could help.

I saw you post on TUAW about the 6 springboard changes and I wanted to try them. So I installed terminal and the ported utilites but I don’t understand how to execute the commands.

Thanks in advance.

Comment by sapphire | November 28, 2007 | 1:49 pm

Hi Erica,

I love your utilities! I have a request for a new one: sending an SMS from the command line.

If something like this can be created, the next logical step would be to integrate it into the bonjour file thrower/catcher utility. Then SMS’ could be sent from a mac, and possibly even received (some sort of polling SMS notifier).

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 29, 2007 | 10:57 am

Macsrck: You need to use ssh and issue commands from the command line. A UNIX primer will probably help you get started.

sapphire; I haven’t played with either Bluetooth or SMS stuff to date but thanks for the suggestion.

Comment by alaniemieckota | November 29, 2007 | 2:00 pm

Your soft rocks. I love it I use it, panning to participate in tests.

Apple should be paying you a lot for what you do.

Comment by sapphire | November 29, 2007 | 5:41 pm

As a followup to my first post, I was thinking sending SMS’ through the iPhone via wifi. Maybe I’ll try my hand at this using your awesome API docs. I’ve been looking for a reason to learn to use XCode and the iPhone toolchain.

Comment by Yanagi | November 30, 2007 | 3:08 pm

Hi Erica,

Love these tools, can’t wait to get started building my own toolchain to try porting some stuff too.

One thing I really want to do is be able to play songs I download with ncftp (through term) in mobilemusicplayer. playaudio is good - and maybe with a front end I could live with it; but for ease of use it would be great if directly downloaded stuff could be synched without the use of a PC

Comment by Yanagi | December 2, 2007 | 1:30 pm

Looks like I might have found a solution for this at #iTouch. The program is MNPlight, which allows syncing of itunes and calendar and even adds streaming radio. I’m trying tomorrwo; I’ll update tomorrow if this proves successful.

Comment by Yanagi | December 4, 2007 | 1:41 pm

hrmmm. I got it installed okay, but sync just seemed to break my iTunes db rather than update it. iTunes then ceased to recognize anything
note to self: when messing with the mobile db, do a backup first.

Comment by Jyrinx | December 8, 2007 | 9:24 am

Hi - I’ve got a (hopefully simple) feature request: I can’t seem to convert /System/Library/Frameworks/AppSupport/all_cities_adj.plist using plutil (I get a bus error). From what I can see by Googling, this file in its XML form has an array as its root rather than a dictionary; is this not supported?

Thanks, Erica, for all your work!

Comment by peeInMyPantz | December 29, 2007 | 3:10 am

hi, i have a feature request. is it possible to run a command to make the iphone vibrate?

i wrote a simple python script to check unread SMS at intervals, and play sound if there are any. but it’ll be good if it vibrates as well. my script uses your ‘playaudio’ functions. thanx

Comment by rogerflores | December 30, 2007 | 8:40 am

As I read in internet, Erica is the Iphone greates Guru.

I have problem making my EDGE working.

By using the same Carrier, i can connect in some parts of the country
very well. But in another parts of the country i can not connect to
internet.

The most strange is that persons using a TREO can use the EDGE very
well. And i can only use the Weather and Stocks application.

If i use the terminal application, i can ping to www.google.com for
instance, but if try to browse google.com the safari start contacting
the site but when start downloading page, it stop.

if i change the size of the package when pinging: ping -s 50
www.google.com i get no response, i guess by a timeout.

Can somebody let me know what can i try to thes my connection and get
succesful?

Thanks a lot and Happy New year!!!

Comment by maverick | January 9, 2008 | 2:45 pm

Where oh where is the mac “File Catcher” application? Everything seems to keep saying its at http://ericasadun.com/ftp/EricaUtilities/ but I can’t find it… am I blind?

Comment by Erica Sadun | January 9, 2008 | 3:44 pm

Oops. Accidentally deleted them. Just put them back up at the FTP site. sorry!

Comment by maverick | January 9, 2008 | 5:38 pm

Ah, thanks Erica! I eventually just used the good-ol’ cmd line to get the job done, but just checked out File Catcher and it worked like a charm. Nice job!

Seeing as you also seem to be taking feature requests here, I’d love to see an app that would let you screen record what’s happening on the iPhone to make a video. Kinda like your snap2vid app, but capturing from the screen, not the camera. If it could somehow work with File Catcher to save the images on you mac as you record, and delete images from the iPhone once they are sent - so you could record longer durations - so much the better! Looks like you have most of the pieces done, so perhaps this wouldn’t be too hard to get done?

Anyway, thanks SO MUCH for all you’ve done for iPhone development and 3rd party apps!

Comment by chico_can | January 10, 2008 | 8:52 pm

Hey Erica,
I’m such a long-time fan, your utilities have been great for my iPhone and you’ve kept me up-to-date on iPhone news through TUAW.
I know you probably have a lot of stuff going on right now, but I was wondering if I could make a request.
I’m using my iPhone in Canada and I’m not subscribed to EDGE. Finding a WiFi hotspot isn’t always easy, and I’d like to still be able to use Google Maps.

there’s a Google Code project for Nokia N880s here: http://code.google.com/p/ogmaps/ which promises offline functionality. Could you have a look and see if it would be easily ported to the iPhone? Thanks!
Mikey

Comment by wooo | January 14, 2008 | 3:27 am

Can’t seem to get ./playaudio to “playvideo”. I assumed it was using the same player as Safari, and since the song plays in safari but not this, perhaps I’m wrong? Also, the process errors, but doesn’t quit, just stays hung and the UI is frozen until I kill it…

Here’s the error:
# ./playaudio BettyBoopRythmontheR.mp4
—-
AVController_CurrentItemWillChange
—-
AVController_CurrentItemDidChange
2008-01-14 03:20:21.180 playaudio[1185:d03] -[AVController failPlayback:reason:notifyClient:]: item with path [omitted] failed to open with err -12921
—-
AVController_ItemFailedToPlay

Any chance us mortals can see the source for some of these utilities (this one in particular…). Thanks for your work!

Comment by Erica Sadun | January 14, 2008 | 9:51 am

Is Betty Boop in the same folder as the playaudio binary? If not, you need to give the program a path to find it

Comment by wooo | January 14, 2008 | 12:03 pm

Yup, same folder. I tried path first. I’m on an iPod touch if that makes a difference

Comment by chico_can | January 15, 2008 | 3:55 pm

Erica, can you help me please??!!

My iPhone is 1.1.2 OTB and I was jailbroken/unlocked with a TurboSIM.

Last night I was installing some SummerBoard themes and when I clicked Home, the Springboard wasn’t responding. My iPhone kept locking and “slide to unlock” takes you back to the springboard, which locks up again and re-locks the phone.

Anyway I got into DFU mode and started the downgrade-jailbreak-OkToPrep-upgrade process but i’m stuck on jailbreaking. jailbreakme.com just pushes me back to “Activate iPhone/slide for emergency” and doesn’t do anything.

Now i’m also nervous about Updating … I know I can’t use 1.1.3, which is fine, but after I install OktoPrep (if I ever get that far) how to I update the phone to 1.1.2?

Thanks, I know you must be busy with the Jobs-note announcements and all but I’m freaking out here!

Comment by ivanivan | January 17, 2008 | 4:10 pm

Dear Erica,
I saw someone asked already and your answer too. I even check intro UNIX primer. But still do not know where to type, how to load to the iphone and what (/var/root/bin ??) Sorry, I am a new kid in this field. I use WIN XP I appreciate your help

Comment by chico_can | January 22, 2008 | 11:05 pm

Regarding my previous comment above, I solved the problem by ensuring the AT&T SIM was in the phone, no others.

Comment by unruhschuh | February 15, 2008 | 5:21 pm

doSafari works just fine on 1.1.3, but if I try to open a url beginning with file:// it doesn’t do anything.

doSafari http://www.google.com works
doSafari file:///test.pdf doesn’t work

typing in that url to the pdf in Safari works fine with the file:// tweak for 1.1.3

see where I’m going? Why not using the built in PDF viewer in Safari

Comment by kody001 | February 22, 2008 | 12:11 pm

Send Song:

Can you please please have the new version available for download through installer for us noobs.

or let us know how to do it using your zip file.

sorry

cody

Pingback by gs - Erica Utilities (iphone???) | February 29, 2008 | 3:43 am

[…] information about the individual utilities and download links for the software. Please join my open discussion thread for the Erica Utilities or return to the main FTP site by clicking […]

Comment by jasontucker | February 29, 2008 | 6:52 pm

Erica,

I’ve been using your snapngo app and was wondering if you have looked into doing a vnc server for the iphone / ipod touch? This would be awesome for doing tutorial videos.

Any thoughts on this?

-Jason

Pingback by gs » Erica Utilities (iphone???) | March 2, 2008 | 6:49 am

[…] information about the individual utilities and download links for the software. Please join my open discussion thread for the Erica Utilities or return to the main FTP site by clicking […]

Comment by DJFriar | March 12, 2008 | 11:29 pm

I think snap2album needs to be updated for the 1.1.4 firmware, as when I run it its trying to save to var/root/Media, which isn’t valid. It needs to go to /var/mobile/Media. Can you release an update???

Comment by ertd | April 1, 2008 | 2:41 pm

Requesting a simple crypt() function. I love the lo-jack idea but I would like to be able to encrypt the actual Lon/Lat in a decryptable manner (I am not jedi enough to install make on the iphone to use gpg).

Thanks for all your hard work!

Comment by luke | April 8, 2008 | 8:26 am

Hello Erica, i have just a question. I’m working with my university about olonomic robot with a mini computer on board with linux OS. I wrote a program to control it with TCP/IP protocol. Now i can control my robot with my iphone with ssh connectio from iphone to robot. But i would like re-compile my program to run it on iphone. My question: there is c++ compiler for iphone?

Thanks, good work!
Luke

Comment by Erica Sadun | April 8, 2008 | 8:29 am

I’m pretty sure that people have used c++ for iPhone development but it may be some hybrid objective-C++ thing. I don’t do C++ myself.

Comment by jjdeluxe | April 15, 2008 | 6:22 pm

Is there anyway to control the dialer from the command line… e.g. i want to SSH to the iphone from my computer, and type “MobilePhone 1-888-555-1212″

Comment by Andala | April 17, 2008 | 2:01 pm

Hi Erica, love your Utilities, esp. the Voice Recorder. I have a great idea for VNotes 0.4. It would be great if one could use the button integrated in the standard iphone headphone’s mic to switch recording on and off. Push once to record. Push again to stop recording. I could be very productive while driving (and it would be much safer, too!)

Comment by TheLaGmAn | April 24, 2008 | 9:32 am

Hi, i was checking the sbar feature, i would like to know if u can add something to be able to run a script or a program when somone tap on the icon? That would be really useful, Thank you.

Comment by GT | October 22, 2008 | 7:56 am

Erica I hope you are still answering questions to this OPEN DISCUSSION. I have recently updated my iPhone to firmware 2.0.1. I love the icheckmail program, and know that it needs your utilities. I foundyour utilities in Cydia and installed them, but was not able to find iCheckMail in either Cydia, or Installer. So i manually installed iCheckMail to my applications folder, and restarted the iphone. The iCheckMail icon appears and all. When i click on it, i see the main iCheckMail screen, but then it crashes and takes me back to the iPhone home screen. What can i do? Does iCheckMail work with 2.0.1 version, should there be a path change? Your help is desperately needed.

THANK YOU SO MUCH
GT

Comment by Erica Sadun | November 11, 2008 | 7:13 pm

GT: I have absolutely no idea what the status of iCheckMail is, unfortunately. I’d suggest you contact the authors of the program directly

Comment by beyondhorizon | August 26, 2009 | 10:44 pm

Could we have utilities updated for 3.0? Some of them are not working on 3.0. I tried launch and sbar.

I am also iphone developer, could help out to port to 3.0 - please let me know
Thank you

Comment by Erica Sadun | August 27, 2009 | 6:34 am

I’ll get to the utilities as soon as I can but I’m absolutely swamped with work right now. Sorry!

Comment by zalyadav000 | December 18, 2009 | 11:00 pm

what is the source in cydia for erica utilities?

Comment by usrrr | October 17, 2011 | 5:17 am

On iOS4, some of the utilities exit with ‘Bus error: 10′. For instance, ‘badge’ and ’sbar’ fail, wheras ‘badgenum’ works flawlessly. Is there a workaround?