sms (or other) to transmit message to mobile device?

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DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
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New Jersey, USA
Is there a gateway or otherwise method for me to relay messages to my mobile device without paying for another monthly service contract (or charging me a per-message fee) ? I tried to search on my own using google-voice, but I could not find anything conclusive on the sms services API for that.
 

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
920
698
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Germany
Depends on country. I have Asterisk + chan_dongle (by wdoekes on github) + a supported Huawei 2G/3G USB adapter + a prepaid SIM and can send using command line: rasterisk -x "dongle sms dongle0 555-111-2222 \"Test message 12345\"" Reception is done by decoding the BASE64 string, then decoding the GSM3.38 character set (all in a shell script) into UTF-8 and finally send that off to me as an e-mail. USSD also works for example to query the prepaid amount left on the card.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
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In the US, for low-volume, email to text is probably the best choice. See here: Here’s how to send a text from your email account

Biggest downside is that you have to know the carrier for each mobile.

I do not know if a generic service to text any mobile regardless of carrier. Also don't have any information about non US carriers.
 

DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
115
4
18
50
New Jersey, USA
Depends on country. I have Asterisk + chan_dongle
I am in the USA. I do not have Asterisk server up now, was planning to re-do one again to run sip phones in the house. But this what your saying sounds like I have to pay for sim service and buy more hardware. I was looking for a free software solution.

Biggest downside is that you have to know the carrier for each mobile.
I could just send an e-mail to my phone too of course. I was planning on assigning a special alert tone for messages from my server - since the phone makes common noises all day that I am too used to hearing. At this point, I might need to make a phone application to receive a TCP message, if that were possible - this way I can post an action back to the server if needed.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
...I could just send an e-mail to my phone too of course. I was planning on assigning a special alert tone for messages from my server - since the phone makes common noises all day that I am too used to hearing. At this point, I might need to make a phone application to receive a TCP message, if that were possible - this way I can post an action back to the server if needed.
That might work, but perhaps not as easily as you'd like it to. Most mobile devices are assigned a non-routable NAT'd IP address by their carrier. There just aren't enough public routeable IP addresses around to serve the set of unique mobiles. So you can't just open a TCP connection in "listen" mode on the mobile and then connect to it at will. You'd have to open a TCP session from the mobile back to your server to traverse the NAT, hold it open, and then make sure you talk over it often enough to keep it alive (i.e., send keepalive messages).

Probably too much trouble to make it worthwhile...
 

cageek

Active Member
Jun 22, 2018
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You can use Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging API to send out (non-sms) messages free tier. You'd have to create an app and register for messages on the mobile, but then you can present the message in any format you want (simple text, decorated, custom, etc.). But, the sender side (host server) is really simple (http POST with data - curl suffices for example). I've only done it for android. Probably, more work than you want. There's a learning curve, but it is pretty much free to use.

The whole TCP back to server on a mobile platform & wait for data gets more complex because of sleeping, memory consumption, keep alive, also queuing for when the phone is off-line, etc.. You are basically duplicating all the existing effort that the mobile platforms already include.