I have a website written in C# and when a user does something I want to be able to send an IM message to an admin and allow the admin to respond to approve/deny the request.
I would like to use something like MSN Messenger or AIM so that the IM messages can also be sent to phones as sms.
You need to pay for the use of an SMS gateway of which there are many. Typically you buy bulk messages in advance. There are very few (if any) free gateways out there as we all know what scalping b*stards the cellular companies are. IIRC, the protocol used is SMPP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway
If you weren't on a hosted site and owned your own hardware, you can plug any modern cell phone into your USB port and use the vendors software to send SMS either via a serial protocol using Hayes commands, or much more likely these days, a nice object model in java, C# or c++. Nokia have offered this for years.
I would take a look at Twilio (http://www.twilio.com/). They specialize in helping developers integrate SMS/Voice into applications.
Twilio is a web service that can be used to make and receive calls and text messages using their REST/XML API. You have to pay for the service, but it is very very to use.
For sending SMS messages out from the program, one simple approach is to use email (as long as you know the phone company of the person you're sending the message to). For example, to send a text to a telus (Canadian provider) phone, just send an email to
[10 digit phone number]#msg.telus.com.
Different phone companies have different formats, you would need to find a list of these addresses for your area. Not all of them support receiving these messages without paying a fee, but some do.
Edit: Here is a list of addresses for US carriers, try the appropriate one and see if it will work for you:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/939/sms_email_cingular_nextel_sprint_tmobile_verizon_virgin/
Related
I have tried to send an sms from C# code using Gmail but I can't find Gmail services for sending sms. I need any way to do that by Gmail or another posiibility. How can I send an sms from C# or VB.NET program to a mobile phone?
You can use the Twilio to Windows Azure Notification Hub service for this.
Its fairly hard to give you an accurate answer as it can depend on where you are and where you want to send SMS's to as some providers only support some countries or have issues sending to certain networks, so make sure you know what your requirements are before choosing a provider.
In the past I've used Clickatel, as they supported the countries and networks I needed, and their API was good enough.
The only other advice I would give is whatever service you end up using pay for it, free services are more trouble than they are worth.
Hope this helps,
Jen
How should I proceed? I found nothing useful googling it but some really expensive programs to connect a cell phone to the pc and use it to send the messages.
I'm willing to pay for the service and the messages will be sent to Israel and US.
I'm using C# but I'm willing to use any language.
Cheers!
The easiest way to do it is with Twilio. You can get it set up in a matter of minutes. Check out my answer Sending SMS from asp.net website for an example program of just how easy it is to send SMS with Twilio and C#.
You want to use an sms gateway that has an API. The most likely will be a REST or SOAP API that you can consume from your app.
When you need to send an SMS invoke the gateway's send method.
The gateway you choose will be influenced by which country you're in and if you need to send international sms.
As a reference we use SMS Global for AU message sending via their API, which can serve as an example of the type of thing you could expect:
http://www.smsglobal.com/en-au/technology/developers.php
Yea, for an actual sms message you will have to buy some hardware or software. A free alternative is to use sms gateways, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways. You can send an email to 1234567890#vmoboile.ca and virgin mobile will forward that email as a text message to #1234567890. The limitation here is not every company offers this service (most major ones do) and you will have to know which company each number belongs to. Here is a list of sms gateways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways
I have work on that purely through C#.
1st you need a sms modem, I live in Singapore and the vendor I got from resides in singapore too. But at home I did my own testing using my Nokia E63 handphone.
I don't have the coding at the moment, but I can tell you how to go about searching.
Using C#, I did a serial port connection (applicable too if using USB), send AT+ commands over to the modem, and the message will be sent.
To test if you phone is suitable, it can be done so using HyperTerminal. Connect your phone to the computer via the correct port and setting and send AT commands directly from there.
The best way to achieve this is to use an SMS gateway. An SMS gateway encapsulates the technicalities of interfacing with SMS carrier medium on one hand and on other hand it provides an interface for application level protocols like http, SMTP, ftp etc. to interact with it. For example, you can have a web application talking to the SMS Gateway over HTTP and the gateway on its other side will talk to the SMS centre over some proprietory protocol to send the SMS text received from the application. This way, the application need not know the low level protocols to send the SMSs.
You can lease a line to an SMS center (SMSC) if you need to send large number of bulk SMSs and configure your SMS gateway to use this lease line to send the msgs. But leasing a line is far more expensive. If you need to send small number of messages, then you can use your mobile phone in place of the leased line. Attach your mobile phone to your PC/Server and configure the Gateway to use your phone. You need to refer to your gateway documentation on interfacing your phone with the gateway. This is not very difficult but fairly simple.
There are lot of commercial gateways available in the market which can be used. But using an open source SMS gateway is a good option. You can use an open source gateway called - Kannel. Believe me, it is not very difficult to set it up and start using.
One of the requests from my product owner is to have some of our company cell phones get a text message if a specific event occurs.
I can easily capture the event in my WCF services. But I am not really sure where to go for the text message part. Is this something I need to subscribe to a service for. Is there a way to just do it free? Do I have to go with a carrier?
I am using C#, .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008
Take a look at Twilio or Tropo - both SMS gateways you can interact with programatically.
Lots of sms-services on the internet. For my latest project at work I had to use smsextrapro but I don't know the rates for that.
I send an email to them with the appropriate details + the message and they do the rest. Pretty easy and straight forward.
Just google around and compare some of the services to see what suits you and your client best.
It also depends on where you are trying to send SMS's.. For example, here in Canada, most providers have the ability to send an SMS via an email address hosted for each phone user. The catch is that you need to know which telco the user's phone number maps to.
We are building an application which is suppose to connect to the Support Engineer's Mobile phone and will alert him about any job to be done.
This application will be based on 2 parts. one is Control Centre part where the interface will be built using Silverlight 4.0 and ppl from Control Centre will be using it using normal pc over internet. The 2nd part is based on the Mobile Part where the support Engineer will be sent a communication via some magic that there is a job. And if the support Engineer will accept the job then the job will assigned to his tasks list...
Now the only issue is that how we communicate to the support Engineer on his mobile. We have couple of options...like SMS, Email over SMS etc...
SMS option is costly, so due to the cost management has refused the option, but actually SMS is fine as far as it is sent from the control Centre, but how we get the reply back from the support engineer. Coz we dont want the support engineer send us reply VIA sms coz this will cost him(thats why management refused this option). We have decided a solution that built a custom application for windows mobile which will intercept the coming SMS on the Support Engineer's mobile and will rasie a poupup detailing the job specs and on the same popup there will be couple of buttons like Accept, Reject. what ever the action will be taken it will update the control room via internet/WCF/HTTP. I have no idea how? and thats why I am here.
I am posting all this LOVE STORY so that any body senior can guide me abut the architect if it is ok or not...or any other options we can dig down further.
I appreciate your participation in this regard.
Thanks
Communication to the device is typically the hard part because the device rarely will have a routable network address. Sending an SMS is a reasonable way - so is sending an email (that's how the Microsoft email transport for WCF works). Another option is to have the device periodically "check in" to a server to see if it has any messages waiting.
Communication back is pretty simple. Build up a public web/WCF service that the devices communicate back to. Personally I'd probably lean toward a REST service to keep your mobile connection point a bit more open in the event you want to connect via something that maybe doesn't support WCF.
#Shax I've not done any mobile development but I think you need a WP7 app that will poll control center server over HTTP etc. if there is any job for the engineer. Another option will be to push any job notification from server to mobile. But I am not sure if this (push notification) is easier and/or cost effective.
Another option will be of setting up a website with details of jobs, then you can alert engineer with an SMS. Upon receiving SMS engineer can log into website and get details of the job.
I just wanted to develop one web application which allows users to send an SMS to any mobile free of charge . I searched on the net and found many codes and articles and through those articles i came to know that for that kind of application, i required either of the
following things:
Web service (Third party web services that are free but not working or not delivering the sms)
GSM Modem ( I don't have any idea about this)
SMS Gateway ( I don't have any idea about plz suggest me a idea
An SMS gateway is basically an API (usually a webservice) which you can call to send the SMS's. If you're not going to send very high volumes I think this is the way to go.
Try something like: ZeepMobile
They seem to have a pretty good guide as to how a developer would go about using their API, which can easily be applied to most SMS APIs out there.
So who is going to pay for the SMS? If the user isn't, then either the receiver or yourself will have to - telco's don't carry SMS messages for free, and they charge each other termination fees when messages arrive on their network from another.