Thursday, December 29, 2016

Make an Old-school two-way pager with Arduino

I made a 2-way pager with an Arduino, GSM shield, and LCD shield. I’ve found this idea to be more useful than at first glance—I designed it so it could be used by children in lieu of a real cell phone, or it could be used as an “SOS” button for someone working alone outdoors or even exercising (if it was a bit smaller). And for the last few weeks, this device has been always on in my living room where my wife and I leave silly messages for each other.

Summary: This project sends and receives text (SMS) messages via an arduino with cellular modem built into a small enclosure with an LCD display and simple control buttons. Full details of the design and build are on Hackster.io.

Could also be called "Most expensive pager made in 2016 ever."

Update: People seem to like this project! It has over 10,000 views, and was even featured on Hackster’s Handpicked Projects of the Week.


Here is a video of the messenger in operation:

Check out some additional pictures:

The three boards used—Arduino Uno, GSM shield, and LCD shield
The three boards used—Arduino Uno, GSM shield, and LCD shield

working sms messenger
It works!

Check out the full writeup on Hackster.io. Enjoy!

-Mike

4 comments :

  1. Charlie BaderNovember 7, 2018 at 1:03 PM

    They stopped making the GSM Shield. What do we do?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mike SchausNovember 11, 2018 at 11:18 PM

      Hey thanks for coming by! I'd check out the new products from Hologram.io, or browse what's for sale at SparkFun or Adafruit. I bet there are some cool new tools out there!

      Delete
  2. AnonymousJuly 7, 2023 at 3:27 PM

    Hey Mike ... i am trying to do a project with my 8 yr old to build a pager from scratch. do you think the instructions laid out here are still good? Asking because the post is a bit dated.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mike SchausJuly 11, 2023 at 10:46 PM

      This project used the Arduino GSM shield and the Hologram data service. If there are modern equivalents available, the concept would certainly work. And the Arduino interface code would be about the same, too. Let me know if you build something!

      Delete

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