Receiving MMS's

Receiving MMS's SearchSearch
Author Message
Alan Jones
Unregistered guest
Posted on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 04:45 pm:   

Hiya..

I think the Best thing to do is to explain what I'm after and perhaps a knowledgeable user (Or Bryce) could point me in the right direction.

I operate a number of mobile sites and a couple of them could benefit from having user pics attached. Can I get people to send a picture and a message to me, then write these as files to the disk, all without intervention?

I have downloaded the trial software to test this, but the only MMS device I have here is a Motorola Phone, which (the software says) doesn’t support SMS.

I need to order a GSM Modem to do the job, but see a number of posts about devices that are ok sending, but not receiving. - I (currently) don’t need to send any SMS’es using NowSMS (although that may be a nice touch in the future), so I need a little help on exactly what to buy.

If anyone has any experience with this, I’d appreciate your input..

In addition, is there any benefit to using (say) and O2 SIM over any other network? – Is it possible to use a 3 SIM (who I believe don’t have a data charge for picking up the components of an MMS message)? (Remember I’m only using it for incoming MMS’s for the near future) – Again, any advice welcomed.

Thanks for your time..

Alan
Alan@buzzed.co.uk
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3947
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 10:13 pm:   

Hi Alan,

In order to receive MMS messages, you need a dedicated GSM/GPRS modem device. None of the phones with built-in GSM modems are going to do the trick because of interference from the MMS client in the phone.

But dedicated GSM/GPRS modem devices will work. Devices like the Siemens MC35 Terminal ... various models from Wavecom and Multitech ... iTegno ... Nokia 3x modems. There are also PC card solutions, the Sierra Aircard 750 being my personal favourite because it has some unique capabilities that make it much faster at receiving MMS messages than any other solution.

Basically, when you configure NowSMS to receive MMS messages, there are several different options for how the received MMS messages are presented to your application ... described in the following link:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/2_way_mms_support.htm

The easiest way to get started is with the file-based interface, where we automatically break the received message into headers with separate files for each of the message objects. There is some more detailed information, and an example at the following link:

http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/485/2135.html

I hope that helps.

-bn
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3948
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 10:21 pm:   

Oops ... I forgot to address your question about using a 3 SIM.

I'm not sure how good 3's MMS interconnection is with the other operators, so you'd want to try that out first.

Another note about 3 is that they don't have a conventional WAP proxy in their network, so you need to configure NowSMS to route through an HTTP proxy instead when talking to the MMSC. This is done by prefixing the proxy IP address with "http://" in the "WAP Gateway IP Address" setting (e.g., http://212.100.225.164). I'm not sure what the Proxy IP and MMSC settings are for 3. We've got a 3 phone in the office, but I haven't tried it for these purposes.

However, I would recommend an Orange SIM for the reason that you describe. They use a separate GPRS APN for MMS, so they don't charge any for the data traffic over that APN ... just the standard MMS charges.

-bn

pimper
Unregistered guest
Posted on Saturday, February 05, 2005 - 07:26 pm:   

[nonsense deleted]