[[!meta title="GNOME Prepaid Manager Applet"]]
[[!meta description="GNOME, prepaid, GSM, UMTS, USSD"]]
Prepaid-manager-applet (ppm) is an applet for the [GNOME][1] Desktop that
allows you to check and top up the balance of GSM mobile prepaid SIM cards.
[[!toc ]]
Ppm is currently beta quality software.
Prepaid SIM cards are a cheap way to get internet access when traveling abroad.
However you need to check and top up your balance from time to time. Most
carriers allow to do this via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data ([USSD][])
messages.
If you have the prepaid SIM in your laptop, netbook or in an USB GSM/3G stick
you would need to take out the SIM card, stick it into a mobile phone and enter the
correct USSD sequence to check or top up the balance (or you would need to use
the Windows only software supplied by your provider). With ppm you can do this
straight from your laptop without removing the card under Linux.
It uses [ModemManager][1] (the GSM and 3G helper of [NetworkManager][4]) to
talk to the modem and [mobile-broadband-provider-info][3] to determine the
necessary USSD codes for your provider.
USSD messages are not standardized and vary between providers.
They usually look like
*130#
to query the balance and
*123*123456789012#
to top up the balance. The 12 digit number after the second star is the top-up code which can usually be
bought in e.g. supermarkets or from your provider to top-up a certain amount of credit.
### Features
* It can check the remaining balance via USSD
* It can top up the balance with a given code via USSD
[[!template id=flattr thing="460518" name="GNOME-Prepaid-Manager"]]
[[!template id=honk_git repo="ppm"]]
### Releases
Tarball releases are available from [here](http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/ppm/tarballs/),
[Debian][Debian] packages are [also available][10].
### Building
Fetch the source code from git then do a:
./autogen.sh
make
make install
### Dependencies
Running ppm is a bit tricky at the moment since you need git versions of
ModemManager. Once these things end up in your favorite distro things will get
much easier. You need:
* [ModemManager git][6], the 0.5 release contains the necessary USSD
support. The version in Debian unstable is recent enough.
* [mobile-broadband-provider-info][5] with support for top-up information.
The version in Debian Wheezy (>= 20110424) is recent enough.
* python 2.6 or 2.7
* PyGI >= 2.28.3, Debian package: python-gobject
* GTK+ >= 3.0.0, Debian package: libgtk+-3-0
### Running
[The GNOME wiki][8] explains how to run and debug ModeManager from the command
line.
To run ppm and point it to a current mobile-broadband-provider-info database
use:
PPM_PROVIDER_DB=/path/to//mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml /usr/local/bin/prepaid-manager-applet
In case ppm can't determine your provider from the information on the SIM card
it will allow you to select a provider from the list.
### Provider Information
If the information about your mobile broadband provider is incomplete ppm will complain. In order to complete this
information just get the mobile-broadband-info-provider source as described above, look for your provider in the
*serviceproviders.xml*. Search for your provider in the file and add the balance-check and balance-top-up information, e.g.: