Building an SMS system

marrakesh

Right lads ,

I am bout to embark on building an SMS system that has a gateway over the web can anyone tell me how i should go about building such a project .

Advice appreciated as surfing a plethora of info on the web and it looks like i am getting nowhere. Have anyone done this before if so how and also has anyone got any advice for me ie: is a siemens system the best to use etc ?

Am looking at doing this low cost as a part time project for night time so any advice is greatly appreciated!

Oh yeah looking to stick up a mysql db with names and phone number etc.

Info appreciated and advice / location of where to get started.

silverside

what are you having problems with? being able to send messages onwards, or the rest of the coding?

From my limited knowledge, you can get an API from the various providers' SMSC thats lets you use them to send messages, obviously you pay a bulk rate + standing charge, you may be able to use one service which then sends on via the appropriate network.

What and why do you want to do it? For something like call-outs of your staff? Have you considered using the software packages provided by the networks?

The Corinthian

I don’t wish to be a killjoy but you probably need to define an “SMS system that has a gateway” a bit more before doing anything else. A simple relay, which bridges the gap between HTTP and SMPP, or HTTP and a GSM Modem, or just HTTP to another HTTP-based gateway? Would the relay simply act as basic middleware, or would fulfil some function, such as the filtering of keywords, the management of bulk lists or similar?

It’s just a little difficult to make suggestions on a pig in a poke, as it were.

marrakesh

Right heres the concept:

Customer(s) has a browser who records peoples phone numbers on a system (through internet explorer / mozilla) and at a predefined period in the future these people recieve a text message from them relating to a product or service.

Basically i would like to build the system and go around selling it.
It would customised and intuitive for everyone to signup etc.

At end of a month it would send a report to the customers about how many text messages they sent and they would be billed accordingly by direct debit.

Thats the system i want to build. Obviously it will be fun todo or else i would not take it on and down the line it should turn profitable.

What i want to do is to do this in the best manner possible so it can be relocated to multiple countries if it needs to be. I am not too concerned about the technical side of it but i would like to know whichg path to go either through a HTTP gateway or through a Siemens device with a sim in it. The main idea is complete portability between networks as i do not want to be tied to one specific mobile phone provider.

marrakesh

Even something like this i may be interested in : http://www.activexperts.com/support/activsms/

dynamic.ie

I'm currently building SMS functionality into some of our products and we found Clickatell. They charge about 3/4c a text, which isn't bad.

You can integrate with their system using HTTP/S, SMPP, SMTP, FTP, XML or a COM Object. You get free texts for testing purposes.

It might help you... http://www.clickatell.com

Regards,

Dave

marrakesh

Hi Dave,

That looks kind of what i am looking for. Does it text from an irish phone number or how does the text appear (as dynamic.ie maybe ?).

Im looking to throw a webpage up and run a cron daemon daily that checks should users be sent a text i expect this is all possible with that program..

How have you found it integrating with there product easy / fast /simple and are they good for support.

All info appreciated, in terms of yourself what type of application are you using i assume its probably network monitoring / service monitoring (judging by ur business) however drop us a line with any info on how the project is going etc would be greatly appreciated..

dynamic.ie

Hi marrakesh,

Yeah, its a nice system they have. I've been chatting with someone from the company a few times and they have been very helpful. Gave me extra credits for testing, answered questions quickly and all that stuff.

Haven't done the actual integration bit with them just yet. Have looked at the docs though, and it seems quite straight forward. Building the database first, e.g. user table with their mobile numbers, etc. I'm using the service as a reminder for a property website. So, users sign up to the website for email/text alerts of new properties that match their criteria, how often they wish to receive notices, etc. The system will send them an email to verify their email address and a pin number to their mobile to verify their mobile number. They must enter each into the website to verify them.

Then, every day, my system will cycle through new entries and see who it matches in the users saved searches. Any that it finds, it will check if they have received a text recently and if not send out a predefined text telling them to login to the website as there are new properties that match their criteria.

If any of that sounds similar, I'd be glad to answer any questions you have. It appears to me that what you are trying to do is quite "doable" but you'll have to do a bit of hand coding to get it work.... unless there is an off the shelf package out there (don't know of any at the moment).

Regards,

Dave

The Corinthian

All you seem to require is one-way SMS, so Clickatell would seem to fit the bill. As you’re talking about crons and MySQL, I think it fair to assume that you’ll use either Java or PHP, and ether is fairly straightforward when implementing a HTTP POST from a script or servlet to the HTTP2SMS gateway. Nonetheless, watch out for timeouts whenever sending a bulk request.

I would say your primary concern would be the structure of the database. Sit down with a notepad and pen (or a copy of Visio) for a few hours and put some effort into designing it before you even consider creating the database. You can introduce a lot of flexibility in a database that can allow you to add new features moving forward, but if done badly you can quickly find yourself in Left-Join Hell. Similarly, if your database structure is too basic and rigid, you’ll soon find yourself having to scrap the whole thing once you want to expand the functionality of the application.

With regard to billings, go for the prepay model. If you bill your clients at the end of the month - even with a direct debit, you’re still paying for the SMS up front (and that will be an issue once you’re doing 5,000 SMS’s p.m.). Additionally it eliminates the timewasters - guys who sign up and send less than ten a month (you lose money on them), as you can impose a minimum purchase in that scenario. Handling SMS credits will also mean you’ll be able to set up test accounts (with ten credits) for potential clients wanting to try out the system.

The main advice though is to design your application in advance. I’ve built a few of these relays and it’s important to get it 90% right before you write a line of code. Specifically, you’ll find that client requirements will change as you move forward and so you’ll want a system flexible enough that you can build from, but not so flexible that it is a monster to maintain.

HTH.

marrakesh

Some valuable information thanks Corinthian and Dynamic.

Corinthian i never thought of the prepay model i assume you would use this with direct debit considering the cost of VISA transactions these days ?

Out of interest corinthian can you embellish the details of your prepay model how it works and a general faq as i have not thought along those lines yet...

Reason i wanted direct debit was so they would just be billed at the end of month regardless without costing me in CC charges.

It is going to be for a specific industry segment and will be subscription plus SMS charge as i think that is the most suited model.