Mechanical engineer and net developer João Santos is bringing again the pager, after a trend, with a custom-built web-linked Arduino-based textual content messaging system — combining an Espressif ESP8266 for Wi-Fi connectivity with an Arduino UNO-compatible main microcontroller.
“The aim of this mission is to permit the person to ship quick textual content messages that may then be obtained on a Wi-Fi [Espressif] ESP8266 [microcontroller], and displayed on an Arduino with an LCD display screen,” Santos explains of the mission, which was impressed by basic POCSAG-style paging methods with a contemporary net twist.
“The online utility was developed in OutSystems, [as] not solely am I very acquainted with this growth platform, but in addition as a result of it supplies a fast and free means of creating and deploying not solely the principle UI but in addition a database, backend, and a fast solution to join safely to my public IP with out having to reveal it.”
The online facet of the appliance is easy sufficient: a touchdown web page affords the person two fields, one for the sender’s title and one for a plain-text message of as much as 160 characters in size. “I added a safeguard on the backend that it solely permits sending a message if none was despatched for a sure period of time,” Santos provides. “I may, and possibly ought to, have applied some type of captcha, however that was already going a bit out of scope for what I needed to do.”
A easy net app supplies a solution to transmit SMS-like messages to the pager. (📷: João Santos)
The receiving unit is made up of two microcontroller growth boards, one with a Microchip ATmega328P and the opposite with an Espressif ESP8266. The rationale for 2 boards: an unlucky expertise attempting to run the whole lot from the ESP8266, housed on a clone of a WEMOS Lolin D1.
“I quickly found this can be a very completely different growth board than the Arduino UNO,” Santos explains, “and simply getting the Arduino IDE compiling for it was a ache! That’s a part of the explanation I made a decision on retaining the display screen linked to the Arduino Uno, the {hardware} was already setup, and it could be simpler to maintain issues separated.”
A hidden admin interface supplies a take a look at the message historical past, with the power to retransmit any that did not ship appropriately. (📷: João Santos)
The ESP8266, then, handles community connectivity over a Wi-Fi connection, sending obtained messages to an Arduino UNO suitable over I2C for formatting and show on an LCD1602 character-based show. Two buttons enable messages to be scrolled, utilizing a resistor ladder to affix each a single analog enter, whereas a buzzer sounds an alarm each time a brand new message arrives.
“What I discovered: do not buy low cost unsupported growth boards, this mission would have been means simpler with an Arduino [Nano] 33 IoT and a I2C LCD display screen,” Santos notes within the full mission write up, accessible on Medium.