How can SMS message activate Confetti Machine?

sophia

I am a Detroit based architecture student working on my thesis project that involves specific technology and programming that I am not capable of carrying out. I am in the beginning stages of research and in brief my project involves a cell phone sending a specific text message to a computer (or cell phone) that then activates a confetti blowing machine. I have attached a simple illustration of this action. Also here is a link to an example of the type of machine that will be activated.
http://www.artistryinmotion.com/equipment/equipment.html
I would greatly appreciate any help on where to start, what parts I will need, details on coding and if this is a basic task that a novice could configure and if not I will be looking for someone willing to produce this part of the project for me.
Kind Regards,
Sophia

remmi870

you could use a stamp, the easy way would be to buy a chap cell phone with a vibration setting and sms capability, something like a track phone or go phone so its a cheap investment, then open the phone, find the motor, solder the output to some leads or maby a head phone jack so you can move the phone, then you could probably use the BS2 oem and a simple breadboard to wait for the sms signal to set the vibrate function on your phone, that will run the stamp that can run a solenoid, motor, smal servo, whatever you need to run the confetti machine, the programing is nothing, just timing from a input.

however one would ask that if you were to build this, what would stop you from using this as some sort of a "prank" or somthing at a school function to cover the band with pudding or something? just looking at the manhattan project angle, email me or PM me if you need any help, i have built large machines with BS2 brains and this seems pretty easy.

Franklin

remmi870, it needs to respond to a "specific message" which your idea will not do.

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- Stephen

sophia

Thank you both for your response. Remmi, don’t worry… this is not a prank Stephen is right in pointing out that only the specific message should trigger the machine. In this case would a computer need to be involved to collect the messages?

remmi870

i suppose that is the glitch with your project, you would need to find out the sms protocol so you could build a software that could interpret it, or maby you could interface a cell phone to find out if it has a serial out, but i think you are gona run into problems trying to get a software to recognize the sms, im not shure if there is a way to recive it without some sort of cellular "handset", not to mention if you used a computer, it would need to have internet capabilities and a internet service, or cell net card, and having it on all the time may be problematic if you get a failure and have to reset itself.

SRLM

Sparkfun has some cell phone modules that are made to interface to a microcontroller. I'd assume that you could use that to get the data (and bypass the computer completely).


Alternately (and probably cheaper), how do you send the message to the computer? I'm thinking that if you can get an email from your phone to computer (or some other HTML document), then you can use JAVA. Get the page source code and read through it with the JAVA program, and if it finds your string then it can output on a COM port to the microcontroller, which then does what you need it to do. For reading a web page with JAVA, see the book "Java After Hours" and for communicating with the BS2 via Java take a look at Building Java Robots.

sophia

I get what your saying SRLM, is there a way I could utalize a chat program
or instant messaging system? would that make things eaiser? I know they
can accept data from cellphones.

SRLM

The book (Java After Hours) also has a project on building your own internet chatroom, and another project on building your own simple web browser. The chatroom would be good if you want to send data via the internet from one computer to another.

As for using a chat program, as long as there is a file that java can parse then you could use it. The thing about the HTML project was that the program downloaded the page, then went through until the key phrase was found. It won't work for something like the Facebook messenger or the AOL IM, since those are programs (or applets) without a file that can be accessed. However, something like a blog (or this forum), where when you 'view source' you can see the text, that would work.

sophia

Thank you all for your comments. It is great to get all this information from you. I need to research all the options now, and see what would work for me. I am sure I will have more questions.
Thanks, Sophia.

SRLM

The January 09 issue of elektor (thank's Parallax!) has a module on their shop page titled "Remote Control by Mobile Phone". It says that you can operate it with SMS messaging. The Art. # is 080324-71 and it's US$ 113.50. It looks like this module can do everything that you need (including operating the confetti machine).