SMS Gateway for Polytech

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MattKiwi17

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#80972 6-Apr-2011 21:44

I am a 3rd year Bachelor of IT student who is interested in developing an SMS gateway system for my final project.

Can anyone tell me what would be involved in building an SMS gateway and getting it to function correctly for use by tutors to communicate with students class changes, marks posted etc.

I know there are allot of companies providing this service but I want to build my own and run it on my own hardware (preferably at low cost).

Any ideas on how to go about this?

hellonearthisman

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#456368 7-Apr-2011 13:08

Are you a legal or electrical technician or software engineering student? To get it functioning you would need legal skills to get a good interconnection deal with Telecom, Vodafone, 2Degrees....

Good luck anyway.

sbiddle

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#456377 7-Apr-2011 13:18

I assume you're talking about a project on the cheap. If so a ~$30 Wavecom modem, SIM card such as a 2d or Vodafone one on a SMS plan and SMS gateway software such as NowSMS will work fine.

owenw

27 posts

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#456659 8-Apr-2011 10:10

Talk to Fronde. It's likely they can help you, but the comments here are accurate, you'll need a lot more than needing to talk to the right people. Couldn't you simplify this by getting the tec to post on their website? They don't do this at all right now, I'm pretty sure SMS won't help too much.

samuelseay

1 post

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#456663 8-Apr-2011 10:20

sbiddle: I assume you're talking about a project on the cheap. If so a ~$30 Wavecom modem, SIM card such as a 2d or Vodafone one on a SMS plan and SMS gateway software such as NowSMS will work fine.

That sounds like a great idea! Such a great solution for a small institution. with 2degrees 2000 texts per month, you could set this up on the cheap. :D

MattKiwi17

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#456670 8-Apr-2011 10:39

owenw: Talk to Fronde. It's likely they can help you, but the comments here are accurate, you'll need a lot more than needing to talk to the right people. Couldn't you simplify this by getting the tec to post on their website? They don't do this at all right now, I'm pretty sure SMS won't help too much.

Currently tech don't use any method of alerting students of class changes or calcelations other than putting a note on the door (too little too late), a notification on the website would be an improvement but who checks the site daily? not many people.

I know that other schools within the polytech use an SMS gateway system and from what I know it has worked well.

MattKiwi17

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#456671 8-Apr-2011 10:41

samuelseay:
sbiddle: I assume you're talking about a project on the cheap. If so a ~$30 Wavecom modem, SIM card such as a 2d or Vodafone one on a SMS plan and SMS gateway software such as NowSMS will work fine.

That sounds like a great idea! Such a great solution for a small institution. with 2degrees 2000 texts per month, you could set this up on the cheap. :D

Yea it sounds really good, cheap hardware cost and fast implimentation, but unfortuantly for the sake of the 'Project' it must be 400hrs and this seems more like a 20hr job. Hmm . . .

owenw

27 posts

Geek

#456672 8-Apr-2011 10:45

MattKiwi17:
samuelseay:
sbiddle: I assume you're talking about a project on the cheap. If so a ~$30 Wavecom modem, SIM card such as a 2d or Vodafone one on a SMS plan and SMS gateway software such as NowSMS will work fine.

That sounds like a great idea! Such a great solution for a small institution. with 2degrees 2000 texts per month, you could set this up on the cheap. :D

Yea it sounds really good, cheap hardware cost and fast implimentation, but unfortuantly for the sake of the 'Project' it must be 400hrs and this seems more like a 20hr job. Hmm . . .

My concern is that setting up a fully-fledged gateway requires;
a) Deals with telcos to get connections to them
b) Costs a ton of money for hardware
c) Could be overkill

The phone solution works best, perhaps you could develop custom interfaces for it.

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MattKiwi17

5 posts

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#456675 8-Apr-2011 10:50

owenw:
MattKiwi17:
samuelseay:
sbiddle: I assume you're talking about a project on the cheap. If so a ~$30 Wavecom modem, SIM card such as a 2d or Vodafone one on a SMS plan and SMS gateway software such as NowSMS will work fine.

That sounds like a great idea! Such a great solution for a small institution. with 2degrees 2000 texts per month, you could set this up on the cheap. :D

Yea it sounds really good, cheap hardware cost and fast implimentation, but unfortuantly for the sake of the 'Project' it must be 400hrs and this seems more like a 20hr job. Hmm . . .

My concern is that setting up a fully-fledged gateway requires;
a) Deals with telcos to get connections to them
b) Costs a ton of money for hardware
c) Could be overkill

The phone solution works best, perhaps you could develop custom interfaces for it.

Agreed, 2000txt's per month would be enough I feel, and the WaveCom model's seem to be available for around $50USD on eBay.

A custom interface would work well for the sake of the project and im sure added benifit for the polytech would result.

vinnieg

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#456693 8-Apr-2011 11:19

I did a similar thing for the last year of my Bachelor:

I set up an SMS Gateway/Booking system for a restaurant using PHP and SQL database with a web2text hosting provider. And a surf cam, but that wasn't part of the original project...

That was 7/8 years ago now, so ages ago. But basically wrote a simple script that sent an email to the web2text email address and that sent a text to the cellphone. At the same time it was adding into a booking sheet

Since it's a project, I guess the polytech will be funding the equipment for it? I had to use an overseas SMS provider at the time since Vodafone hadn't implemented their web2txt and 2degrees didn't exist...

I have moved across the ditch. Now residing in Melbourne as a VOIP/Video Technical Trainer/Engineer.

nate

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#456708 8-Apr-2011 12:07

owenw: The phone solution works best, perhaps you could develop custom interfaces for it.

Pretty easy to do, if you use sbiddle's suggestion of NowSMS, it provides a SMPP interface which is really easy to send SMS through.

How do I know? I wrote a custom SMS sender to sbiddle's sms gateway this way