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SMS-to-Internet Gateways?

Posted by Cliff on from the cool-DIY-projects dept.

starrynights asks: "I am planning to make an on-campus communication system and i need to find a free SMS Gateway. Can anyone give me any information on this?" Interesting thought. It might make an even better do-it-yourself type project. What would you need, aside from a computer with an internet connection, to build something like this on your own?

23 comments

  1. Not any more? by Stillman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is mtnsms.com not free any more?
    Sorry, I don't really do the mad SMS thing, but I thought it was still free for limited messages.

    Failing that, google is your friend as usual with a lot of these q's. :P

    --
    Prisoner #655321
  2. Just use Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It even takes out the trash !

  3. Ask Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you're going to be lazy, ask questions, and expect decent answers, you should pay for it.

    Google Answers.

  4. What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    What's with all these stupid "ask slashdot" lately? I don't know what's worse; the stupid questions lazy people are asking or the slashdot 'editors' posting them.

    "I'm a lazy sob. I don't feel like doing a simple search on google or doing any type of research. I'll just ask on slashdot and let the idiots there find all the answers for me."

    This is friggin ridiculous. And if you look at most of the idiotic ask slashdots that have appeared, they were mostly posted by Cliff or Michael. Time to get some new 'editors' folks.

    1. Re:What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cliff ?
      Well what can you expect from someone looking like this ?

    2. Re:What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's the guy out of the switch ads!

    3. Re:What The? by starrynights · · Score: 0, Redundant

      i just want to tell you that i am a novice and just trying to learn something new and for that being a student i can't really pay, so i decided to ask those souls who don't mind giving an advice or two for free.

    4. Re:What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google is free.
      I think that's the point.

    5. Re:What The? by MattBurke · · Score: 1

      What's so stupid?

      If the poster had asked for an email-to-sms gateway then yes, it would be stupid. But look at the title. "SMS to Internet".

      You do a search and you get kannel. OK, so you've got a box and installed kannel on it. Now what do you do? You pay a lot of money to someone for something you can use to make it work, whatever that is... But that's not the question. The poster asked for "free".

      It's something I've been looking (admittedly not bery hard) for years, but not found anything which would let me send an email or whatnot from an SMS.

    6. Re:What The? by ccady · · Score: 1

      The poster may or get a brilliant reply which could not have been found on Google. There may be some "orthogonal" information that the poster did not know. Slashdotters have been known to have some insights every now and then.

      Slashdot readers get to see what types of questions other readers have. I never looked at SMS to Internet gateways, nor heard of mtnsms.com. Now I know something new that is interesting to me.

      --
      J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
    7. Re:What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have used IPIPI successfully to send email from an SMS enabled phone. Works quite well. It is a product of "Upside Wireless," and they make other software relating to mobile middleware.

      Here is the link to their help file on originating an email via SMS (you can also reply to and receive e-mail), and they have a slick filter system to make sure your phone doesn't get filled up with mail if you decide to go "whole hog" and run all your mail through their gateway (I think you have to pay a montly fee if you use a lot of messages).

      Have fun!

    8. Re:What The? by ksph2 · · Score: 1

      I don't know what network you're on / country you're in, but I've been using O2's mmail (www.o2.co.uk) for ages. It'll work both ways, and although it looks expensive it turns out to cost nothing at all if you're on a pre-pay with free texting like I am (i used genie when it existed, so I dont know if you can still get the package I'm on).

      Every email I get is copied to my phone, and I can easily send emails from sms (you just stick the email address at the start of a text, which is usally what the 'send text as email' option on your phone will do).

    9. Re:What The? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy shit. I didn't know Cliff was a nig nog. Sheesh.

  5. Easy peasy by Ratso+Baggins · · Score: 3, Informative

    Take the one from the top

    --

    --
    "we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.

  6. ICQ or DIY by jquirke · · Score: 3, Informative

    You could use the ICQ SMS bridge (people have written code to use these - they support most GSM networks).

    Alternatively, depending on your SMS costs, you could build one yourself. You can use almost any phone and connect it to a PC with the appropriate cable, or use IrDA with the more expensive phones. Most of the phones that support IrDA can be controlled using simple AT-style commands over virtual serial console, in addition to the proprietary interfaces specific to each manufacturer. There is a great deal of multi-platform software/libraries available - do a search of "SMS" on Freshmeat. Alternatively, you could write your own software.

    The AT-style commands can be found in section 07.07 of the GSM specifications.

    --jquirke

    1. Re:ICQ or DIY by Gordonjcp · · Score: 4, Interesting
      What I did a while ago was I got an old Nokia 8110 phone, which I had a serial cable for. Now Gnokii doesn't support its wierd-ass proprietary data format for using it as a modem, but sms's quite happily through it. Then I went to one of the many little corner shops that sell pay-as-you-go sim cards, and stuck one of those in with about £20 credit. If you use Orange (at least in the UK) and you put £50 into a prepaid phone, you get cheaper sms and calls. At about 5p per message, the £20 lasts for quite a while.

      Of course, this was more for sending status messages, so it wasn't sending that often. It was handy being able to sms a password and command to the pc, though.

  7. Kannel? by valkadesh · · Score: 3, Informative

    You may try Kannel. Its is a free open source WAP and SMS gateway.

  8. not more.. by Noodlenose · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    All you will achieve is to produce more mobile phone wielding humans annoying their peers.

    Dirk

  9. No such thing as free SMS by ikekrull · · Score: 3, Informative

    The phone companies have found that, despite SMS using no actual bandwidth on their networks, that it is a popular service, and is hence worth a lot of money.

    Might as well forget 'free', the days of free SMS via MTN etc. are pretty much over.

    Here in New Zealand, we pay 10-20c per SMS message, typically 20c per message unless you have some volume deal with a telco.

    I use a Siemens M20 modem to handle sending and receiving SMS messages as part of my system monitoring, and it is not very expensive, due to the low volume. I use the excellent SMS-Tools package (a search on freshmeat will find this) and the system invokes a perl script upon sending or receipt of an SMS, making it extremely easy to do just about anything I want - i.e. SMS-to-email/web gateway is trivial.

    Open it up to the 'public' though, and costs would start to climb hugely. A volume of 1000 messages per day would cost me from $3000-$6000 a month here, which, for the actual bandwidth supplied is rather extortionate.

    --
    I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
  10. Not sure what you want to do here.. by Delta · · Score: 1

    Hi,

    I've been working with SMS solutions for some time now, and might be able to offer some help.

    I'm not entirely sure what you want to do here, but I don't think you're likely to find anyone offering free lunches.

    If you're looking for something that's *only* sms->internet, not the other way around, you *might* be able to find a gateway offering free service. You will however probably end up paying for the MT (Mobile Terminated) SMS messages.

    If you want two way communications your best bet is probably to look at getting sponsored by a SMS Service Provider, or a local teleco. Keep in mind that you can look at most of the providers worldwide for your services, you don't have to limit yourself to the providers of your own country.

    There's also the question of how you want things set up. There seems to be two types of serice providers offering 2-way SMS. Some are providing a simple interface in which you use various dataformats (XML is popular) over HTTP to deliver a outgoing SMS message, and their server will connect to yours to deliver an incomming one. The other option is to use a native SMS delivery protocol, such as SMPP. That'll either require custom development, or you can use kannel.

    I know of one SMS gateway of the first type who allows you to register keywords on their SMS number, on which you can recieve messages for free. Outgoing still costs though.

    Let me know if I can offer any advice on the issue, I'm available at terje(at)elde.org.

    --
    Terje Elde
  11. [OT] Google by Delta · · Score: 1

    As always, there are several posts which seems to think the author of the post is unable to use google, and seems to imply that the author doesn't have the skills or intelligence to use google because he's posting here.

    To be honest I find it sad that these people are posting seemingly without taking the time to understand the question, much less find out if google really offers the answers.

    For this spesific question, I read it as the author needing access to a gateway allowing him to send/recieve SMS messages, not that he's looking for the software.

    And quite simply, Google does not offer a simple solution for a production grade free gateway which will solve the problems he needs to solve.

    At least to me that makes the question not only relevant for posting here, but it's also a interesting question which I'm sure sparks the interest of other /. readers.

    Just my $0.02

    --
    Terje Elde
  12. SMS to Email Gateway by krishnaD · · Score: 2, Informative

    First SMS will not be free. If you are looking for reading and writing SMSes using a PC and Cell phone use http://www.gnokii.org.

    Using this you can easily have a SMS Email Gateway or sms to internet gateway. You will be able to send/receive emails over SMS using this, though you have to write small scripts (If you want I can send mine). We had done a small project of controlling Electrical Devices using SMS.

    You send SMS like "Lights on" to a cell phone which is connected to PC using Data Cable. Poll this Cell phone using Gnokii which will let you read the content of the SMS. Depending on the command you can take the action. For controlling Electrical Device we created a circuit (Search google for Coffee Cup) which was controled by PC parallel port. So when you receive a SMS saying "Lights On" you write one character to (numeric zero will send zero volt) parallel port which will generate 5 Volt current and in turn switch on lights.

  13. SMS Gateway Software by bisscuitt · · Score: 1

    There are Ways to do this... I know a couple of sites on the web that will do it, but i doubt that they are Free (such as MTNSMS)

    The probable cheapest way to do this is with a Linux BOX, a GSM Modem, and some SMS gateway software (such as: kannel).

    Using this method, you could provide each user with a number of there own, and all messages sent to that number use your GSM Modem number as thier SMS Gateway. The messages can then be delivered straight into a mailbox, or an SQL DB for a Web App etc....