(FIXED) feature request: SMS wind update on site

[theory]

Check out this forum. Its in Ireland. A kiting buddy of mine I met in Ireland pointed the site out to me for posting my travel survey. Right on the front page I noticed they have a SMS wind report feature that anyone can use.

Any way we could get the same thing on pskite?

http://www.kitesurfing.ie/

wicked cool and doesn't take a moderator to approve messages. A great way to keep each other informed from a SMS.

[Loki]

Didn't you try getting SMS updates of current conditions working? I think I signed up for it and never got a single SMS. What happened with that?

This sounds cool, but if nobody uses it (like nobody uses the one on kitesurfing.ie, apparently, given its last SMS), I'd rather not spend the time getting it set up.

[theory]

Yeah I did set it up. There are a few success stories. However, the down fall was two fold. First, once the group got to be 150+ people each text cost me about $5 per pop not incuding the $30 per month membership fee. The second was that the system required a moderator to approve the message. It only allowed 3 moderators. It got used probably 10-15 times last summer, however, all three moderators were out riding at the time so the additional text wind updates did not get approved. By the time a moderator saw the wind report, the sum was setting.

I shut it down in Oct, because it was getting cold and knowing whether storms fronts were providing wind didn't seem to need reports like knowing if themals are blowing at a place like Jetty did.

[Loki]

That's pretty funny stuff.

I think this is a good idea. Since those Irish figured it out, we know it's possible.

I say we know it's possible - but unfortunately, I'm sort of stumped. I need to figure out a couple things.

You need to get the information off the cell networks and available on the internet.
1 - How do you send a SMS to an email address?
I have a google voice invite I haven't used yet, so this would work:
http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin ... wer=160203

2 - How can I get the data out of that email?
CPanel can create an @pskite.org email that pipes the email to a php script.

Over the course of making this post I figured out how to do it. =)

This one is pretty cool, so I'll start working on it soon.

[theory]

hell yeah... you are going to be quite the popular guy!

[Loki]

By the way, I looked into getting a "short code" for this.

IE - send a text to "53321" with your message, etc...

$500 per month. Ouch. We're not in the big leagues yet...