By dallasgrant@newswire.ws on

I am wondering if it is possible to setup an SMS system where an international community could communicate back and forth with each other much like Upoc.com but only one group that sends messages.

I know that it is possible to send messages to the phone from the website, but is it possible to have the person receiving the message, reply to the group with their phone, and have their reply go to every phone associated with the group ... like a mobile messaging community.

Comments

skorch’s picture

skorch commented

Sometime in the next year or so I wanted to do something like this but with camera phones. I wanted to allow users to be able to automatically post an image sent over sms using your phone. If anyone has done any development with SMS messaging using drupal, I'd be interested in listening.

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Dublin Drupaller commented

Hi Skorch,

might be worth checking out the moblog.module that allows people to updated their weblogs using their phones...or send pictures./video clips etc. to a drupal site.

http://drupal.org/node/10477

Hope thats of use...

Dub

___________________________________________________
A drupal user by chance and a dubliner by sheer luck.
Using Drupal to help build Artist & Band web communities.

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

skorch’s picture

skorch commented

Thanks a bunch.

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Dublin Drupaller commented

Interesting idea Dallas.

To answer your question:

is it possible to have the person receiving the message, reply to the group with their phone, and have their reply go to every phone associated with the group

A lot of SMS gateway providers will give you, as standard, a whole suite of tools and instructions for integrating your sms gateway into your site. Such as simple SMS webforms, SMS-2-web voting competitions. etc.

Unless it is a commercial project, it is fairly expensive to setup and maintain an SMS gateway for a website...not forgetting the bills on top of that for messages sent/processed. A bottom-of-the-range solution where less than 2,000 messages are being sent each month would cost about $200 or $300 per month to maintain.

Worth noting the following though if you're thinking of going that route:

a) most GSM compatible mobile phone handsets have send SMS by email as standard features. So you can use that as the form of communication with drupals mail handler modules to redirect an incoming email to trigger a mail.module (sending a message to everyone in a specific group).

b) If you have access to a web-2-sms bi-directional gateway already...it will work in the same way..i.e. messages coming in can be redirected from your site "mobile number" to a specific email address. And all you have to do is hack/tweak the mail.module to send messages to your sms gateway with arguments that get through the security...i.e.:

- an incoming SMS message triggers mail.module to send a message to a specific group.

- mail.module outputs the message + username + password + phone numbers for that group and sends it to your sms gateway.

c) if you're going the DIY front, might be worth checking out the moblog.module..http://drupal.org/node/10477

d) if you're thinking of linking it in to the ecommerce.module where members of your drupal site can buy SMS credits..drop me an email..we might be interested in helping build an SMS.MODULE

We have quite a bit of experience in advising musicians and bands on sms and mobile technology and understand the black box side of the area.

Hope that is of use.

Dub

___________________________________________________
A drupal user by chance and a dubliner by sheer luck.
Using Drupal to help build Artist & Band web communities.

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

dallasgrant@newswire.ws’s picture

dallasgrant@newswire.ws commented

The SMS Gateway is a bit unaffordable right now, but your mentioning on using an e-mail address sounds interesting. I know most of the major providers in the States use an email address such as 5073512541 AT tmomail DOT net, so a message could be sent by the website just by a simple sendmail

However, the problem lies down with the return … on my T-Mobile phone, it shows the email address that it was sent from, but a reply would go to 501 an not an email address leaving an annoying task to send a reply properly.

I found one gateway http://www.freesms.net , but it is still too expensive …. But one of the few that I saw that has a global presence. I will be considering a commercial venture with this for my MeTarzanYouJane.com (Personals website) website, and my Tuberocity.com (will be a music recording label website) both of which I will be building in drupal both projects are a few months down the line. It’s funny how much a message would cost to send when I send and receive well over 5000 a month with my phone for 10$ a month. I am guessing that upoc.com must be paid by the providers to offer their service for free to encourage text-messaging use.

My current project is with RainBowsTrip.com and is a site that encourages people to start and alliance to start a revolution to build a free society. This website does not have any intensions on being commercial and I doubt I could even accept advertising on the site for revenue. I suppose that I am stuck temporarily until I can finish my commercial sites.

--
Dallas Grant
http://NewsWire.ws and http://RainBowsTrip.com

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

Dublin Drupaller commented

my two cents on the wireless community stuff is that it's probably best to work with email especially for non-commercial stuff.

People tend to use SMS for phone-2-phone communication at the moment and are just beginning to discover how to send emails using their handsets. I think SMS will continue to be preferred for phone-2-phone for it's immediacy.

Which is probably a good thing.

I'm not so sure I would like my mobile phone buzzing every few seconds with another spam SMS in the same way email inboxes get crammed full of unsolicited junk.

There's a lot to be said for email to be dealt in the same way as SMS...i.e. you pay a cent or a few cents for each one you send...

In the same breath...probably worth noting that the moblog module allows users to setup an email alias...i.e. they have an email address for their normal email and a different one for their mobile.

Probably worth having a quick look at it Dallas, there maybe a simple workaround that will allow your community to respond in an easier way.

http://drupal.org/node/10477

If you do have any joy or success, please remember to post back up here.

Dub

DUBLIN DRUPALLER
___________________________________________________
A drupal user by chance and a dubliner by sheer luck.
Using Drupal to help build Artist & Band web communities.

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

therave’s picture

therave commented

I don't know if you're still interested, but I've just added an SMS Gateway module for sending notifications from Drupal to mobile phones (and, eventually receiving replies back from them).

It's in Drupal CVS at the moment, or downloadable as a zip file at my site. I'll add it as a proper module project once I've been able to test the incoming message reception properly.

David Hamilton
http://www.jiffle.net/