mobile phones?

[paradoxewan]

Anyone devloping a way of getting picture or video clips from a mobile phone into the mix?

With G3, and GPRS it should be pretty easy to get the clubbers to send their own pictures to the screens, and to even stream the mix back to their phones???

Anyone interested?

[krokodril]

simply needs a server which picks up the data from the com companies(who will love your idea) and makes it available on ethernet.
Nice idea as a gimmick though.

[Bluelive]

Pretty easy with imode stuff.
You need an adapted webserver on the internet with some scripts.
Having internet at a gig can be very expensive i imagine.
Im more intrested in stuff like sms messages into the mix, anybody experience with that ?

[apu]

Hi Bluelive

I have thought about getting SMS into the mix too.

Currently stuck because I dont have enough h/w. I need to find some $$$ to get a small PC built that runs some SQL and PHP and SMS s/w to bind it all together with the flash movie that plays the txt.

Its not that hard in theory but getting all the gear together is all $$$ ya know??

[matttinsley]

i used to put a message on the screen asking for sms messages from the crowd. i manually typed em in to censor any racial/sexist/porno type stuff. it worked very well, i also used it as proof to the wanky club owner that people were actually looking at the screens.

i used a text generator from a mx12 and keyed it over the top, no choice in font, but didnt matter as it cut through the occasional smoke cloud.

[InsideUsAll]

sometimes the simplest methods are the most effective, nice one matt :p

[Bluelive]

Wont you be getting loads of junk for weeks if you used your own phone# ?

[Ollie]

you can get pay as you go sim cards for like a fiver, so that would sort that problem out. :)
although the text thing is'nt really my thing, the picture messaging could be quite cool, shame this tech won't be widly available, or more importanty affordable for a while.

[dedhedgehog]

yeah as far as sms goes we regulary use it
- pay as you go sim (make no calls so it's relly cheap) in a phone pluged into a PC
- then a little bit of VB programming to get the messges off the phone and onto a scrolling title
- then key the scroll over our output.

The programm also has ability to run our own messeges

A normal phone can pull about 10 sms per minute but if you start getting more than your fair share (according to the mobile operator) of sms then they will start sending them to your phone in bursts. At the moment we get about 200 - 400 messages per night in burst of 20 at a time.

We recently had a night with higher than normal expected texting so we used an external sms server (with a nice easy to remember number). After a quick chat with there tech support people a format was agreed for them to be sent to us (via the internet). A Quick modification to the message scroller program and it was grabbing messges from the internet rather than the phone.


I imagine once picture messaging takes off a bit more (at th moment not enough students have the expensive phones) we'll start to take advantage of that.

The DJ likes the system as well cos it give him another way of determining how the crowd are reacting



sorry for the long post - it's prob. a bit off topic too

[Bluelive]

How doya get the messages pulled of the phone ?

[dedhedgehog]

using a noika phone and a serial cable

then you need either nokia data suite (it has it's own sms reading program)

OR - this is the way our programmer did it:

various people have developed Activex controls for connecting to nokia phones. Our programmer found one via google then wrote the VisualBasic app to use it.

googled (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=freeware+nokia+ActiveX+dll&meta=)

i think theres a free one called MobileFBUS or something like that

inabit
dan

[pangolin]

Hi all,

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is William Benner and I am President of Pangolin Laser Systems and PangolinSMS. One of your forum members directed me to this page regarding SMS and such.

We have a piece of software called Interactive Messaging Unlimited (IMU) and is, what we would consider to be, a third generation SMS system. This system can work with up to four SMS sources simultaneously and can work with both CDMA and GSM systems. It supports voting, chatting and even some limited picture messaging using EMS. MMS support is nearing completion as well.

You can read about IMU at our brief and albiet marketting-oriented web site which is www.pangolinSMS.com

Currently, the SMS and EMS messages are received into our IMU software and is then directed "somewhere" for display. This "somewhere" could be, for example, onto a laser display, or onto a video display or even an LED light up sign. The output of IMU is very flexible and can theoretically be configured to send messages in any way and to any program.

Currently for video display, we have another companion product called Video Messaging Unlimited (VMU). This takes the messages from IMU and can display them in video along with fixed or scrolling text, voting results, multimedia playback (MOV, MPG, AVI, etc), nickname list, etc.

Currently our IMU and VMU are used in discos, clubs, special events and the like. VMU is very well suited for "video beamers" and plasma displays. The results are very professional and are along the lines of the professional displays you see on TV, and even MTV "battle of the bands" and such.

Your forum colleague indicated that there is a large demand for our product, if it could be adapted to work with VJ software. I would say that since IMU is very configurable, there is a high likelihood that indeed, something like this could be done.

I am completely open to any and all ideas about how we might customize our IMU product to work with VJ software. I have looked into VJ software and VJs in general and find this to be a very exciting possible combination.

I suppose the key question is, how do we get messages from IMU into the VJ software for display? One possible answer is for us to work directly with VJ software companies using some sort of "plug in" architecture, if such a thing exists. Maybe another possible way is with text files or dynamic FLASH?

If you have any suggestions, please fire away. Send me email to visual@pangolin.com I would love to customize our product and make a VJ-specific version. Believe me when I say we are very customer oriented and would love to have a number of good BETA testers out there.

Best regards,

William Benner
Pangolin Laser Systems and PangolinSMS

[sondz]

Loading varialbe from a text file in flash is easy, but it would be much better if the software could output the messages in XML format, ast this is a much tider way of getting stuff into flash.

I've only really used/developed flasy for use in Flowmotion. I have tryed pulling in variable from accross the net from a php script that generates an XML file on the fly.

but that didn't work!

having a static XML file (of even just a text file) on the local machine might work better, but i've not tryed yet.

[akira_k]

Originally posted by pangolin
I suppose the key question is, how do we get messages from IMU into the VJ software for display? One possible answer is for us to work directly with VJ software companies using some sort of "plug in" architecture, if such a thing exists. How about Freeframe. Maybe you guys can work out a Freefame interface for any VJ app that suports it!

However I can't help but think of speed problems. How hard on the computer is your program? It might decrease the computer's performance thus making the VJ app a bit sluggish.

[sondz]

from my experience with phones, data cables and PCs, the botle neck is with the phone,becasue they have much slower processors than the PC (obviously). So the PC is more often than not wating for the phone rather than vice versa.

but that might be because my phone is shit.

the is an add on for my Asus motherboard that lets me read sim cards, I don't know much about it, any one know?

[sondz]

also, has any one seen this:

telesymphony (http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/)

i heared about it from one of my lecturers. not sure it works particularly well on an audio level, but an interesting use of technology.

there is a list of coloaborating companies too if anyone wants to take this further.

lozX

[pistolpete]

If you have a spare nokia phone and a data cable, you can try and use Wolfgang Rankl's SMS Transceiver Java applet. From this site you can download his code and with a bit of programming you could get it to export an XML file which could be easily read into flash.

http://www.wrankl.de/SMST/SMSTransceiver.html#Controlling

[pistolpete]

After quite a bit of time programming, I have managed to succesfully make a prog (written in java) that extracts incoming SMS messages from a mobile phone and then writes then to a text file. If anyone is interested then the following commands will set up your mobile to send incomming SMS messages dirrect to the serial port and not to store on the SIM.

AT+CMGF=1

AT+CNMI=2,2,0,0,0

This can be done in a terminal prog in windows. NB afer using this, you'll have to turn your phone off then on to reset it so you'll then still continue to recieve txts to your SIM as normal.

If anyone is interested in the java prog I wrote, PM me and I'll send you the code

[paradoxewan]

www.mms2web.com

being doing this sort of thing with vodaphone at a few overseas gigs, quite effective, but is better on its "own" screen rather than in the mix as its easier for clubbers to catch onto.

[moonbase]

I often put up a screen message for folk to send their mobile pictures to my laptop via bluetooth then I can quickly open them and drag them straight into available media in Modul8 & have them on screen in a moment; takes a second & I get some really nice pictures. iBook and a bluetooth adapter is all that's required. :) :)
Can you send sms via bluetooth? Not sure, not tried it.

[midi]

Maybe this:


"Vidicom's TXT-2-Screen System allows customers from your venue to use their mobile phones to send text messages that will be instantly displayed on the screens during an event, a concert or a presentation. These text messages will be processed through the ArKaos VJ Remote Flash Text module and will appear on the screens mixed with the effects and visuals from ArKaos VJ Remote or other sources"
http://www.arkaos.net/partners/vjr_description.php
dit not try it but they have a seven day trial download
http://www.vidicom.co.uk/products/t2s_demo.html