Hello,

I'm looking for the necessary components which use SMS (Short Message
Service) messaging to communicate and execute their role and give
feedback.

I was thinking of lets say power switching hardware which would be
sent a switch ON command and they would receive the SMS, authenticate
perhaps and then switch ON the power to the device they're controlling
and maybe send back an acknowledgement of a success or failure. 
Another example would be GPSs, temperature and humidity sensors and so
on. You get the picture. :-)

That's one of many ideas that have been supported with the necessary
components to allow a solution provider to build their solution.

I'm seeking information on these hardware components and some software
products that work to contribute towards the goals of the overall
solution intended.

Deliverables:

1. Hardware suppliers of M2M SMS components.
2. SMS and M2M supportive products.
3. Articles and papers on the subject, brief and focused.
4. Ideas and opinions that you may have on the subject would also be
valuable.

/Lizardnation

Hi Lizard - Well seeing as you're not getting many bites I thought I
might put my 2c in.

The tone of your question makes me think you're looking for off the
shelf equipment  - is that correct ? In the past I have read of (and
could probably find the references to) software packages hosted on a
linux box which are able to talk to a SMS enabled phone plugged into
the server. Now for linux box you could read 'embedded PC' style
PC-104 type set-up (ie paperback book size) and so the thing doesn't
have to be enormous. So if that's of any interest to you let me know
and I'll try to find the relevant references (I'm not a researcher so
we'll have to do it via comments).

Now while we on that tack have you taken a look at :

http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=182502

... from a brief reading these are GSM modems in a PC-104 format and
so you'd end up with quite a nice small package, modest power
requirements etc. If you haven't already you might want to take a
look.

Let me try again - what I was trying to get over in the previous
comment was : are you intersted solely in a turn-key solution or would
be you be interested/capable of putting various bits together which
would do the job for you ?

Hello South0f40,

I sure would be interested in putting things together as I don't think
there's that amount of mass market for these things to provoke a
manufacturer to provide your plug'n'play bits to pick up and assemble
based on functional requirements.

I just need pretty good ideas for accomplishing machine-2-machine
communication in an affordable and dependable manner.

As to the question you're referencing, yes I took a look at it, in
fact, I was the one who asked it. :-)

I guess if you put these two questions together, you can pretty much
figure out what I've been trying to reach on a wide scope.

I'm looking for the means to put things together to cover the needs of
companies that have assets in areas of GSM coverage and don't
necessarily want to get involved with them if they can take care of
themselves by allowing them to communicate together via SMS across the
world, where GSM coverage exists and SIMs with roaming are used,
resulting in a solution that can be made into a very smart thingy with
some good ideas behind an application.

When you think of it, other worries arise such as space, temperature,
humidity, power and shock requirements in different situations.

I'm aware, at a high level, of satellite based data exchange solutions
with batteries that last between three to five years.  Pretty
impressive stuff, though expensive and is probably for the commanding
heights of industries.

It would be interesting to plug in sensors of all sorts, such as
humidity, temperature, vibration, noise, RPM, speed, GPS and motion
for example.  Something like the x10 standard, but goes beyond the
boundies of home sweet home.

I appreciate your interest in helping me out by achieving the goal of
the question via comments, I hope I can be of use to you on some other
occasion. :-)

/Lizardnation

Hi Lizard - Well I have managed to find what I was remembering having
read. It's not exactly what I remembered ...

http://www.gnokii.org/

... as you can see it's more of an client to interface to Nokias
phones. Nevertheless it might be of interest (apart from anything else
if the receiving setup never wanted to send then buying a cheap
'pay-as-you-go' phone might be a better option than the modems).

I've also found ...

http://smslink.sourceforge.net/

... which is more like what I thought Gnokki was doing. As you say I
think there's ample scope for control mechanisms once you've managed
to actually get the message into the controlling hardware.

I'm a bit rushed now but if I think of anything else I'll let you
know.

Hi Lizard, for M2M, one side of the M is probably at the device level,
while the other side is an SMS gateway connecting to a PC.

For the machine side, there's quite a few options.  I've found one
that's quite interesting - http://www.dpspro.com/tcs.html.  They
specialize in GSM controls.

On the server side, there are many commercially available software. 
You can take a look at http://www.visualgsm.com.

Rgds,
Joshua

This first disclaimer is for the google people: I am not promoting the
following company, however it is purely an example and I believe it
will be the soul company that will be able to help with the above
question.
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I believe the people of irepublics 'http://www.irepublics.com/' could
assist you with your needs.  They develop such software/hardware
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