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Project Help and Ideas » Sending a text message

January 30, 2012
by ashag
ashag's Avatar

Hi,

I am starting a new project where I need to send a text message to a person's phone and I'm thinking of the best way to do this. So far I've come up with two ideas -

  1. Connect a bluetooth chip to the nerdkit and send a signal to a smartphone (this will be in the bluetooth range of the kit). An app on the phone will keep listening for the signal and once it recieves a signal, it will send a text message to the phone. The disadvantage of this approach is that the battery life of the phone will be greatly reduced since it keeps polling for a signal every few minutes.

  2. The next way is to somehow connect directly to the internet. Once I do this, I assume I can send a message through HTTP using PHP(or something else). The problem with this approach is I don't know how to connect the kit to internet/HTTP?

I am thinking that approach # 2 would be a better idea and also cheaper since there is no extra phone involved. Can someone please give some suggestion as to how I can connect the nerdkit to the internet ?

Thanks Ashish

January 31, 2012
by treymd
treymd's Avatar

You could connect to an inexpensive computer through the UART and use a program on the computer as a relay using python or any other method of your choice. This is the easiest to implement.

Alternatively there are 10/100 ethernet modules which will allow your device to connect to a LAN. The ENC28J60 modules on ebay are interesting looking.

January 31, 2012
by missle3944
missle3944's Avatar

ashag,

I've seen programs that utilize Google's gmail text sender. I think you input your gmail and the person's cellphone number and carrier. I too have looked into this in the past and this way seems to be the most cheap.

-Dan

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