Proof of concept - send/receive SMS messages

I'm working on an application where it may be useful to support SMS text
messaging, e.g. send a text message with some keywords and get a text
message back with some information.

I'd like to demonstrate the idea as a proof of concept and as this is for a
primarily non-profit organisation, I'd end up paying for the initial tests
myself.

Therefore, signing up to the big text message services doesn't make
financial sense. I know that some mobiles can be connected via USB/serial to
a PC and ATI commands used to send/receive text messages.

What I don't know is what's the cheapest model that would be suitable for
this and whether I can use a PAYG tariff.

Thanks, Rob.

Rob Nicholson wrote:
> I'm working on an application where it may be useful to support SMS text
> messaging, e.g. send a text message with some keywords and get a text
> message back with some information.
>
> I'd like to demonstrate the idea as a proof of concept and as this is for a
> primarily non-profit organisation, I'd end up paying for the initial tests
> myself.
>
> Therefore, signing up to the big text message services doesn't make
> financial sense. I know that some mobiles can be connected via USB/serial to
> a PC and ATI commands used to send/receive text messages.
>
> What I don't know is what's the cheapest model that would be suitable for
> this and whether I can use a PAYG tariff.
>
> Thanks, Rob.

You can do this manually with a Windows Mobile device if you wanted.
Very easy to write an application which runs on the device itself and
consumes SMS messages and then sending SMS messages based on the content
of the incoming message.

AFAIK, certainly any Windows Mobile 2003 or later device will do that -
both PDA and Smartphone varieties.

It's also possible to do it in Java, but personally I've not done that
before but do know that finding what which Java APIs the devices support
can be difficult - some may not support sending SMS messages for example.

D

rob.nicholson@nospam_informed-direct.com declared for all the world to
hear...
> I'm working on an application where it may be useful to support SMS text
> messaging, e.g. send a text message with some keywords and get a text
> message back with some information.
>
> I'd like to demonstrate the idea as a proof of concept and as this is for a
> primarily non-profit organisation, I'd end up paying for the initial tests
> myself.
>
> Therefore, signing up to the big text message services doesn't make
> financial sense. I know that some mobiles can be connected via USB/serial to
> a PC and ATI commands used to send/receive text messages.
>
> What I don't know is what's the cheapest model that would be suitable for
> this and whether I can use a PAYG tariff.

The tariff is not relevant, if you go PAYG you just need to make sure
there's enough credit on the phone to allow SMS sending.

Sonyericsson phones have good support for AT commands. I would suggest a
K750i or K700i if you can still find one, both will be fairly cheap and
have bluetooth, USB and infrared connectivity.

There are also several bits of software which will send SMS through the
phone for you using a PC, for example floats mobile agent (google).
--
Regards
Jon

> Sonyericsson phones have good support for AT commands. I would suggest a
> K750i or K700i if you can still find one, both will be fairly cheap and
> have bluetooth, USB and infrared connectivity.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll get onto eBay :-)

Cheers, Rob.