Indigo Domotics

Any new ideas re how to send an SMS without a fee and without a new thread starting on the phone (eg like ATT does)? Or is Adium considered the best free solution?

hamw wrote:

Any new ideas re how to send an SMS without a fee and without a new thread starting on the phone (eg like ATT does)? Or is Adium considered the best free solution?

I use Textie for free SMS messages from Indigo to my iPhone's Textie App. Indigo treats the messages like emails, but the iPhone Textie App is very similar to the AT&T messaging app, with push notifications that pop-up.

I'm not sure exactly what "without starting a new thread" means. The first text my phone receives from Indigo starts a new thread, but subsequent messages and responses occur within that same thread.

I've found Textie to be 100% reliable, but I'm not a heavy user. That also means that my home broadband is very reliable because, as mentioned, Indigo handles the texting as emails. I receive SMS to the phone instantly, but there can be up to a 5 minute delay for Indigo's email scanner to pick up messages sent to it.

I primarily have used it for monitoring and controlling an outside outlet, but recently expanded messaging notifications to a few other scenarios, for example if a motion sensor is triggered while the house is set to Away Mode.

My recollection is that there is a free (ad sponsored) version of Textie or for a dollar or two, they remove the adds. Since I also use it for texting family/friends for free instead of paying $.20 to AT&T for each message, I splurged for the ad free version. I have no idea whether is is better or worse than other texting apps.

I get a not of notifications on my iPhone each day, and use Prowl (the iPhone companion to Growl). There is a one time charge ($5 I think) for Prowl, and after that it's all free - no SMS charges, etc as it works on Apple's "push" technology.

There is also a nice interface to Growl in Indigo, so I have Prowl set up on my Indigo server to relay the Growl msgs (via Prowl) to my iPhone. It's all very seamless once you set it up.

Just thought I would add my two cents. Amazon has a web service infrastructure call Amazon web services. It includes lots of cloud services including storage and servers. One of the services is SNS, or simple notification service. One of the choices for notification service is SMS. If you setup an account, and much of the services are free for individuals, you can setup a web services interface to send SMS messages. They also have a java based CLI tool that lets you send SMS message to the web service from the command line. So all you have to do is call the command line from inside applescript and you can send automated SMS messages, and emails as well.

jeramiah1945,

Funny you mentioned them. I already have a few servers on Amazon, and it's on my list to check out that service. I'm curious if the SMS messages will all say they are from the same place that I define, or if they will be from a random address as I have seen other services do.

I'll try to remember and post my findings back here.

AT&T allows for sending an email as a SMS (xxx-xxx-xxxx@@txt.att.net) which Indigo can send. I looked at AWS but getting it setup is a bit more daunting than this method.

Looking for help to execute apple script on different mac on WAN...

I have Indigo running on an old mini in my utility room. I don't really want to pay to upgrade the OS to have iMessage. But my newest computer has iMessage.... Can I execute a script across my WAN to my new computer to send me a message?

I've found this apple script works from my new computer:

-- this script works from AppleScriptEditor
tell application "Messages"
set myBuddy to buddy "123456789" of service "E:myemail@mac.com"
send "**MessageFromHome!" to myBuddy
end tell

I just want to trigger it from my IndigoServer in my utility room!
Suggestions?

You can try using a remote tell:

Code: Select all

tell application "Messages" of machine "eppc://USERNAME@PASSWORD:HOSTNAME"
    set myBuddy to buddy "123456789" of service "E:myemail@mac.com"
    send "**MessageFromHome!" to myBuddy
end tell


Mountain Lion has tightened up security around remote events so I don't know if it'll work or not.

this seems to work:


do shell script "curl -v -d gl='US' -d hl='en' -d client='navclient-ffsms' -d c='1' -d mobile_user_id='1234567890' -d carrier='ATT' -d ec='' -d subject='Alarm' -d text='fire' -d send_button='Send' http://www.google.com/sendtophone"

sends an sms to att cellphone 1234567890 with subject: Alarm and text: fire

google states it is turned off, but it sill works

Karl

Hey Guys,
If been searching for a way to send SMS on events (mostly triggered from my alarm system based on Indigo). If you're going to send a few SMS a month, try this script to send it through Skype (with Skype Credits)

Code: Select all

set theSMSText to "YOUR MESSAGE"
set thePhone to "+46XXXXXXXXX"

tell application "Skype"
   set TheSMS to (word 2 of (send command ("CREATE SMS OUTGOING " & thePhone) script name "Notifier") as text)
   send command (("SET SMS " & TheSMS & " BODY " & theSMSText) as string) script name "Notifier"
   send command (("ALTER SMS " & TheSMS & " SEND") as string) script name "Notifier"
end tell


I am living in Sweden, tried some "email to SMS" apps first but think Skype is the most convenient app (even if it's not cheep).

Very nice solution

Thanks