Simtron

Simtron is a SMS reception Slack Bot and Api software built on top of standard SIM5320e gsm and 3g modems serial connections through USB.

Contribute

We prefer pull request, but you can also open an issue.

Is Simtron needed in your workflow ?

Simtron can be extended to do whatever you need with a bunch of sim cards, imagine you have 16 mobile phones connected through USB to keep them charged and also to communicate with them. Then you need to listen to received SMS and react doing something usefull. Simtron can just automate that, avoiding all that mess of phones with sims you need to keep up and running.

In Tuenti, we have the following use case: we need to do login in our applications when developing new features and also when doing QA. In development, we can avoid that login most of the times; but, when testing, we need to use test accounts that behaves like real customers, also in login related stuff. These accounts uses "one use SMS code" based authentication.

So we started having lot of sim cards around the company, assigned to development teams and QA teams. We realized this wasn't efficient at all, all these sim card should be maintained and paid, so we decided to share the sim cards in a service tha allows to read and list SMS in a common company channel, reducing the amount of required cards.

To automate this task, we're using Simtron.

Requirements

You will need following hardware:

• Multi SIM card module device, simtron is compatible with lot of hardware, take a look to the following picture. We've tested in hardware containing SIM5320e and SIM800l modems.

• A PC or server having at least one USB 2.0 port and running linux (USB 3.0 is not recommended because of its hard limit of 32 devices per USB controller). Simtron can run on windows and mac too, but we have not tested in such operating systems.

Installation

You will need node 12 to run Simtron.

Just clone this repo and then execute:

npm install

Then, to start the service you will need pm2 package to be globally installed:

npm install -g pm2

To make this installation works, you will need to set a file with basic configuration, all fields but slack token are optional. In repo root, put a file called data/config.json, with following content:

{
    "bot": {
        "names": ["Simtron"], // all the names the bot will respond to.
    	  "slack": {
            "token": "YOUR SLACK INTEGRATION TOKEN",
            "adminUserIds": [...] // array of valid slack user ids.
        }
    },
    "notifications": {
        "senderGmailAddress": "Valid Gmail address to be used as mail notifications sender"
    },
    "countries": { // These entries are used to configure the sim card catalog, organized by country and operator.
        "ES": {
            "name": "Spain",
            "flag": ":flag-es:",
            "lineTypes": { // These are just operator name and sim card classification
                "Movistar": ["Tarjeta", "Contrato"],
                ...
            }
        }
        ...
    }
}

Depending on your system, to access USB ports you will need to run previous command as sudo, please do this on your own risk and responsibility. To avoid running as sudo, you should add the non sudoable linux user to dialout group, to do so, use following command:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout YOUR-USER

If you need to use email notification of received messages, you should authorize Simtron to use your Gmail account. Simtron will only require email sending permissions.

To authorize:

• Login into your Gmail account in a browser.
• Go to Google developers console: https://console.developers.google.com/
• Create and download oauth 2 credentials (clicking on Credentials -> Create credentials)
• Copy downloaded JSON file on ./data/googleAuthKey.json
• Open terminal, go to simtron folder and run: npm run google-auth
• Follow on screen instructions until the script get finished.

Last, just execute:

npm start

This will show a new process running under pm2 process manager. If you need Simtron to restart on every system restart, just type:

pm2 startup

To restart type:

pm2 restart simtron-service

To kill:

pm2 delete simtron-service

To see logs:

pm2 logs simtron-service

Available command on the bot

For users:

Read sim catalog

Simtron

This command displays the simcards catalog. If there are unregistered sim cards in use, this command will show them too, allowing to register properly if needed.

If some sim is not working properly, it will be strikethrough

Read sim details

Simtron details <phone number>

This command will display the ICC, msisdn and connection status of the sim identified by the given phone number.

Enable a SMS to Email redirection

Simtron redirect <phone number> <email 1> [email 2] [email 3] ...

This command will set redirections from given phone number to all provided emails. For now on, all SMS arriving to phone number will be redirected to the given emails.

Clear SMS to Email redirections

Simtron clear redirects <phone number>

This command will delete all previously configured redirections for the given phone number.

For Admins:

Port identification

Simtron identify port

By executing this command, simtron will ask for port search criteria.

You can search a port in where the required SIM is inserted by entering the device's port index, the ICC or the phone number. By doing so, all LEDs on the phisical devices will go off and only the selected port LED will light. That way, you can identify the port in where a simcard is inserted.

This effect will last for 10 seconds.

Register sim card in catalog

Simtron register <unregistered sim port's index>

This command starts a formulary to identify and then register all required sim data, just answer inline questions (single selection questions should be answered by typing the option number).

You can find the unregister sim port's index in the SIM catalog, being an admin user.

To cancel a registration process, just type:

Simtron forget it please

the please word is not required but, you know, we need to be gentile, also when talking to bots (remember terminator).

Edit sim card data in catalog

Simtron edit <phone number>

This command edits previously registered sim cards' data. This process is also cancellable with same command.

Enter pin code

Simtron enter pin <blocked sim port's index>

This command allows to enter a pin code to unblock a SIM card. This won't modify the SIM, this will simply enter the pin code every time the SIM requires it, untill you change the SIM to a new slot in the hardware, so please, avoid moving SIMs from one slot to another without real need.

If you need to move the SIM card to a new slot, you will need to enter the pin code again.

Please, make sure the used pin code is correct, if you enter it wrong, you can make the SIM require the PUK. By now, Simtron only allows to enter pin codes, to unblock a SIM that requires a PUK, you'll need to extract the SIM from Simtron and unblock it on a phone.

You will find the blocked sim port's index in SIM catalog output.

Force SIM operator

Simtron force operator <phone number>

If a Sim card is not working as expected, and it should, you can force the operator to one available, to do so, please select the operator from the list after executing this command, this command will take some minutes scaning available operators, please be patient.

SIM visibility

Simtron show <phone number>

Simtron hide <phone number>

By using these commands, you can make a SIM card visible to everyone or just for admins. When a SIM card is hidden, only admins will see it, please notice the icon shown in catalog output for hidden SIMs.