Update: I've attempted to automate the steps above by using a package, have a look at: Huawei E169G - the easy way

Yesterday I treated myself to a new mobile internet "dongle" to go with my Asus EEE PC. I decided to go for the Huawei E169G usb modem as it matches my black EEE, however there is a small problem with getting this device to work straight away. The problem is that the E169G is a composite device, which basically means that it will ask as a USB memory stick until it is sent a command to tell it to be a modem. The EEE doesn't know about this so you can't use it straight away as a 3G modem in the connection wizard. Fortunatelty, back in April Dale Lane documented in his blog how to send the modem the right command to be able to use it wil the EEE, his blog post on the topic is worth reading as it explains the background to the issue. After experimenting with my friend Keren Mills' E169G (thanks Keren!) to check that I could get this method to work I took the plunge and got my own one. Following the instructions on Dale Lane's blog I was able to send some commands manually to the unit to get it to switch but what I really wanted to do was to get the EEE to recognise the device automatically so I can start a 3G connection without having to run any commands in the terminal. Fortunately this is possible.

Here I how I got it all to work. The first thing to do is to get hold of the program that sends the command to the E169G to get it to switch to modem mode. This is called usb_modeswitch and is available from: http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ . This utility is suuplied ready to go and after you download the file for it uncompress it by (opening an terminal and) typing:

tar xvzf [the name of the file you downloaded]

This should create a new directory containing the downloaded files. If you look inside it (cd [the directory created]) you should see a file named usb_modeswitch. This should be executable (i.e. the computer can run it as a program, it should appear green in colour, if it is not fix ths by typing chmod u+x usb_modeswitch). We now need to copy this file into a location where it can be easily found by the operating system, so type:

sudo cp usb_modeswitch /usr/sbin/

The next step is to make ourselves a small file that will actually function as a command to switch the E169G into modem mode. We are actually going to send the unit two command, one to tell it to stop being a storage medium and one to tell it to be a modem. For fun, let's use VIM, a text mode editor to do this. Type this start the VIM text editor:

sudo vim /usr/sbin/e169g_switch

Press the 'i' key to start inputting and type:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1001 -d 1
/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1001 -H 1

To save the file press the ESC key and then enter ':wq' (this means write the file and quit). You now need to tell the EEE that this is a program that it can run and not just a text file, so do this by typing:

sudo chmod u+x /usr/sbin/e169g_switch

At this point we now have a command we can run manually to switch the E169G into modem mode, but what would be ideal is to get the EEE to run this automatically when the unit is plugged in. We can do this by adding a configuration file as described under the "How to automate" section of the usb_modeswitch documentation. So we need to create a small file to do this, type:

cd /etc/udev/rules.d

This brings you to the place where we need to add a file to get the EEE to send the switch command automatically. To start work on the file type:

sudo vim 70-e169g.rules

Press the 'i' key to start inputting and type:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb" SYSFS{idProduct}=="1001", SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1", RUN+="/usr/sbin/e169g_switch"

.. and press ESC then enter ':wq' to save and quit. Be careful to type this exactly as shown, making sure you enter the right number of equals signs.

Hopefully by this point your EEE should now be capable of using the E169G. You might have to restart the machine, but the next time you plug the E169G in it should get picked up as a modem and you should be able to use it to create a 3G connection using the wizard.

What I don't have yet is a way to send and receive SMSs and get the signal strength. There are however some utilities out there which might provide this functionality (of which this one from Vodafone looks promising and UMTSmon looks like it could help too). I'll be having a look at these soon so keep an eye on this blog.