Sending SMS from the Raspberry PI

Yesterday my friend Larry - KB7KMO was in my Shop, we both have need for Status and/or Alarm Messaging from the Raspberry PI, a casual google searches did not provide much easy help. There is/was much information on how to do it with very long and complex configurations, but we wanted something simple.

After Larry left, and after several hours (actually more than a few) of research, I have found a free service that can be used to send a "SMS" messages from the Raspberry PI to a Cell Phone, using the "curl" command.

Obviously, An Internet connection is needed for the PI, and the "curl" command must be installed (if not already).

$ sudo apt-get install curl

The free SMS service is provided by "textbelt.com" (thanks, textbelt !).

There are limitations to the "textbelt.com" service; no more than 75 messages sent per day from a single IP Address, and no more than 3 messages per 3 minutes can be sent to a single Cell Phone number. For most typical use, this should not be a problem.

Note: the SMS messages received by the Cell Phone will be delivered from "txt@textbelt.com".

Usage: on the command line or shell script:

$ curl http://textbelt.com/text -d "number=AAAPPPNNNN" -d "message=This is a test message"

Where "AAAPPPNNNN" is the: Cell Phone Number, AreaCode, Prefix, and Number. Also, dashes ("-") can be used within the phone number, as: "number=202-555-1212"

Note: the words "number=" and "message=" must be used as shown.

For Canada and International use see: Web page.


- Have Fun with PI Messaging !


-- Home Page: https://WA0UWH.blogspot.com