Create something like an old pager

[eivl]

I live in Norway, and here you can not use pagers anymore (not without special hardware in an estimated price range of 1500$) and my boss wants me to find an alternative to this.
I want to be able to send small text messages to a portable device like a pager. It is only for use in our company so wifi is an option to transmit data.
My question is, is this something that could be build with electronics by a novice (that would be me) or is there already something pre build hardware i could use? (thinking about arduino)

For myself, i did take a course of electronics while studying at the university, so i know the very basic and i am not afraid to learn something new or even advance.

Hope someone can give me some pointers

[jeroen79]

Any cellphone can send and receive SMS.

[rickey1990]

Well alot of company's don't allow mobile phones at work. With peoples phones more like computer nowadays, give them something so basic, calls,text, no credit,just a sim,means there be doing there job and not wasting there work hours on socialising. Not sure if this helps, but you can pick these up for about £10, £9 if you get them in a bulk of 10. all that is needed is one decent phone to text these devices.



Link @ http://www.aliexpress.com/premium/Ultra-Thin-Pocket-Mini-Phone.html?g=y&needQuery=n&SearchText=Ultra%2BThin%2BPocket%2BMini%2BPhone&CatId=0&shipCountry=uk&initiative_id=SB_20150528110622&SortType=price_asc&filterCat=5090301,380230,200003132&groupsort=1

[hneve]

Esp8266 + et display + buzzer og en behagelig boks å putte det i..

[free_electron]

esp8266 is too power hungry.  take a look at the electric imp. slap on an i2c lcd display , a button , a buzzer and an led.

[JackP]

I remember a Ben Heck texting radio project. Not too sure if it is open source tho, and maybe too much work for a 'novice'

[jeroen79]

What exactly are the requirements for this project?

What kind of company is it?
How many users?
What kind of environment will it be used in?
How simple or complicated must the system be?
What kind of features may be needed in the future?
One-way or two-way communication?

Purchase of materials is just one part of the cost.
An in house project will take time to be developed and then built.
What if it takes the OP a month to complete it? I don't know his wage but it may be more than $1500.

Development of the hardware in the employee's pockets will be much easier if you use existing hardware such as pagers, cellphones or something else.
This way you don't have to integrate various components, design a case, shrink things down or do extensive testing.
You then only need to develope a way to interface to this hardware.

[boz]

I'm sure there are still pagers out there being made, but If your really going to make something yourself you may want to check out some of the new LORA radio modules.

I got two 433mhz Dorji DRF1278DM modules for $35 off ebay and I managed 6km range on a small stub whip antenna at 1kbit/sec data rate, the module could wake up and check the other one connected to a server in about 20mS and using under 100mA which should give plenty of operation time on a battery and well suited to an embedded project.

Several people have even reported getting 15KM+ range using a better antenna and/or higher ground which I can believe as the spec(/hype) says its possible

I'm thinking of using similar in the next version of my data aquisition terminal in place of wifi

[Richard Crowley]

I live in Norway, and here you can not use pagers anymore (not without special hardware in an estimated price range of 1500$)

What does that mean, exactly?  Is it no longer legal to use the RF channels?  Are they expensive antiques?

Here in the US amateur radio operators ("hams") have taken some of the thousands of discarded pagers (available practically for free) and are using them for emergency alert purposes.  If the pager receives an alert signal, then turn on your 2-way radio and prepare to participate in the emergency response net.

[BradC]

Absolutely. A cheap FSK transmitter and a POCSAG encoder is all you need to run old pagers. I wrote one years ago on a HC11. I'm positive you could knock one up quickly, it's not that hard. Protocol is well documented, just look it up.