SMS Message Board/Digital Signage

One pretty cool use for Perl which I have been involved with recently has been the design and implementation of the integration software for the Optus Message Board at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia - See here for details about the upcoming official launch on the 19th November. This Message Board allows visitors to Federation Square to send SMS messages from their mobile telephones and have their messages displayed on large, colour LED text displays attached to the East Shard building in Federation Square.

Introduced to this project very late in the picture, the use of Perl has allowed the company that I work for currently (The Swish Group) to develop a cross-platform solution - This was particularly important as there has even been an installation platform shift since the original RFT response was provided - drawing upon some of the hallmarks of rapid application development project methodology. The role which Perl has played in this solution is two-fold - Firstly, Perl was used in the form of mod_perl and SOAP::Lite to develop a web service interface for message receipt and routing (to which a .NET client connects from the SMS message gateway). Secondly, Perl was used to build an event based engine (using Event.pm rather than POE because of it's lighter overhead) which connected with each of the LED text displays, polled their current status and communicated new messages for display. Connecting these components together is a backend database (MySQL) and web-based administration system which serve as the persistent store and management interface for the integrated system respectively.

Visitors to Federation Square should take a look at this Message Board if they get a chance as it is an excellent example of how Perl can be used for integration solutions in unusual settings. Messages can be sent for display using the telephone number 19 SMS FED (19 767 333)

perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001000000000'"

Comment on SMS Message Board/Digital Signage

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by thor (Priest) on Nov 16, 2005 at 04:03 UTC
Is there some sort of filter in place that prevents smartasses like me from texting "f*** the world!"? If so, that'd be interesting. If not, hmm.... thor `Feel the white light, the light within Be your own disciple, fan the sparks of will For all of us waiting, your kingdom will come`	[reply]
Re^2: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by rob_au (Abbot) on Nov 16, 2005 at 06:34 UTC
There is filtering in place for the inbound SMS messages but this function is handled by the SMS gateway before the messages are passed through to SOAP web service end-point described above. In addition to this, there is a small charge associated with the sending of the SMS message, which should prove enough disincentive to prevent rampant spamming. `perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001000000000'"`	[reply]
Re^3: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by Anonymous Monk on Apr 10, 2008 at 07:11 UTC
http://www.natenead.com	[reply]
Re^2: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by sanPerl (Friar) on Nov 16, 2005 at 05:14 UTC
Thor, You are correct. If somebody develops such kind of script the world would go head over heels for such script. I always spend lot of time in deleting "Excelent Offer ... Call Now" kind of SMSs.	[reply]
Re: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by Anonymous Monk on Dec 28, 2007 at 05:57 UTC
could the technology or a version of it be used to post sms messages to blog or web sites ?	[reply]
Re^2: SMS Message Board/Digital Signage by rob_au (Abbot) on Jan 10, 2008 at 12:44 UTC
I'm sure it could, although there are already a great many SMS gateway services widely available. `perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001000000000'"`	[reply]


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