modem to send numeric page?

[cj]

Has anyone figured out a way with VB2005 to send a numeric message to a
pager using a common 56kb modem?

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Cj,

From your description, you're wantting to send some data to a pager (web
page?) through common 56kmodem. For this issue, would you provide some
further detail information, what is the exact target pager like and its
functionality? Also, is the 56k modem only the network tranfer interface or
you'll need to communicate to the raw modem interface port?

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[cj]

Forget it. I don't have the time to figure it out now. For what it's
worth however I wasn't talking about web pages. I wanted to know if VB
could control a modem to dial a number and enter a call back number or
numeric code like folks used to do in the the 80's with old fashioned
pagers. Frankly I'm not even sure how to page our cell phones and my
investigation this AM seems to suggest it wouldn't be automatable.

 

[Guest]

Forget it. I don't have the time to figure it out now. For what it's
worth however I wasn't talking about web pages. I wanted to know if
VB could control a modem to dial a number and enter a call back number
or numeric code like folks used to do in the the 80's with old
fashioned pagers. Frankly I'm not even sure how to page our cell
phones and my investigation this AM seems to suggest it wouldn't be
automatable.

Yes, it's possible - You can access the modem through VB.NET 2.0's serial
port classes and issue classic AT commands? I'm not sure if there is a
better way (TAPI?)

As for pagers - you can either dial the pager directly and send DTMF tones
- or you some providers offer a central number which provides an API of
sorts (dial-up service) to send pager blasts.

For example, here is the dial-up service that is used by Rogers
Communications in Canada:

http://www.rogers.com/english/wireless/paging_support_using.html

 

[Guest]

Frankly I'm not even sure how to page our cell phones and my
investigation this AM seems to suggest it wouldn't be automatable.

As for "paging" cellphones... you can use SMS (text-messaging).

There are several SMS aggregators out there - basically you send them a # +
message and the aggregator will figure out which provider to route the
message to.

Click-A-Tell is one of the larger aggregators online. There are several
other ones. I believe Google has a free test service online - but you need
to determine which provider to route the message yourself.

 

[cj]

Thanks, but this is still looking unlikely. The whole point of this is
to alert me to the internet being down. Since I don't have internet
connectivity at that point I can't send an email or other message to our
cell phones. As this pc has a 56k modem I was hoping I could rig
something to send me some code to my cell when it lost it's internet
connection. I'm grasping at straws now. Frankly all I know is
periodically this machine can't talk to our partner and at that same
time the email it tries to send to my cell saying it lost the connection
fails to send. So the first I know of a problem is when I get a message
saying it's working again.

Will it happen tonight? Will it happen again ever? I don't know but it
happened Friday and Monday.

I've got logs but nothing notable jumps out as a problem. I've recently
added to the logging to test ping google and wikipedia and note their
status immediately after loosing connection to our business partner.
Hopefully this will confirm the pc can't see the internet.

The strange thing then is there is another machine here that does the
same thing and #2 will run fine while #1 is down then 30 minutes or an
hour later #2 is down and #1 is fine. So I must conclude the building's
internet connection is ok. The logs are on our file server so since
they are being written I know it can see our network. I think it's
firewall or virus protection stuff but that's not my department and I
need to be able to tell those folks during the problem so they can
troubleshoot but I as I said all I get is a "up" email never the "down"
email so best I can do is say we just finished having a problem and
that's not good enough.

 

[Dick Grier]

Hi,

Yes, this is possible. What you have to implement is the TAP protocol
(Telocator Alphanumeric Paging protocol -- this is not the TAPI protocol).
Here is a link to a description:

http://www.phoner.de/TAP_V1P8.PDF

I include a dll on the CDROM that accompanies my book (see below) that
implements TAP (message limited), however the supplier of the dll no longer
is in business, so there is no support for it.

Here is a current library:

https://www.inventivelabs.com/Doc/ntpage/servertap.htm (I also include a
demo version of this dll with my book.)

Using a pre-built library is MUCH more practical and cost-effective than
trying to write the code yourself, IMO.

Dick

--
Richard Grier, MVP
Hard & Software
Author of Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications, Fourth
Edition,
ISBN 1-890422-28-2 (391 pages, includes CD-ROM). July 2004, Revised March
2006.
See www.hardandsoftware.net for details and contact information.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Cj,

I agree with other ones that VB.NET or .NET can control modem or other
device that connect through serial or other communication ports, however,
since the provided API(or use pinvoke to call other unmanaged API) only
provide raw level control (such as send raw bits or receive raw data from
ports), it is also necessary to know what's the expected raw data bits of
the target device(such as modem).

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


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