Simple MMS howto?

Simple MMS howto? SearchSearch
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nimbus
Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2003 - 02:27 pm:   

I just came across this website and I'm amazed. Could anyone answer a couple of questions, please. I just want to send pictures from the mobile to my computer at work. Nothing more than that!

1. Do I need a connection to a service provider?
2. If I connect a mobile over serial cable to my computer at work - must this mobile be able to receive and display pictures? Or can it just be some cheap piece of hardware?
3. Whenever my computer at work receives a picture, is it possible to start some application or request a script on a webserver via NowSMS?

Thanks a bunch in advance!
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support (Bryce)
Posted on Friday, May 23, 2003 - 02:17 am:   

Hi Nimbus,

Normally your service provider would offer this type of functionality ... the ability to send an MMS message to either another phone number or to an e-mail address (they might not support replies back via e-mail).

NowSMS is geared more toward application developers or service providers.

If you wanted to develop an application around this, then yes, you could do it with NowSMS and a modem connected to a PC at work.

You'd configure your mobile to send MMS messages through NowSMS as its MMSC, and send messages to the phone number of the mobile attached to the PC.

In the current version of NowSMS, when an MMS message is received by the gateway, it only stores the information in a subdirectory of the gateway, so you would need to write an app that scans for new message files in this directory. (We have more options in NowSMS for processing received SMS messages, but SMS is simpler to pass via HTTP because it is just text ... so on received SMS messages we frequently call a user HTTP script to process the received message.)

We've got a new version that should be going out to beta in a few weeks that will make this process a lot simpler. You won't have to reconfigure the mobile to use NowSMS as its MMSC ... you just send through the operator MMSC, and we can fetch it on the NowSMS side via GPRS.

Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for the v5.0 beta release of NowSMS ... it should have some neat new options for MMS processing.

-bn
nimbus
Posted on Tuesday, May 27, 2003 - 08:31 am:   

Thank you!

I'm still not sure how things work. All I want is to receive MMS messages, not send. Imagine me having a gsm modem connected to my computer. Would it be possible to receive MMS messages with it and get the data off the modem via software?

TIA.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support (Bryce)
Posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 - 02:58 pm:   

There's one consideration.

When the phone receives an MMS message, what it receives first is an MMS notification message. This is a special binary message sent over SMS. It contains header information about the MMS message, and a URL pointer that can be used to retrieve the MMS message content.

With NowSMS, it can receive this MMS notification message (as long as you are NOT using an MMS or WAP-push compatible phone as your GSM modem ... as such a phone will intercept the message without forwarding it to the COM port).

NowSMS will then try to fetch the MMS notification URL that contains the MMS message content.

If it can fetch the URL, the MMS message is parsed into individual file components and stored in the MMS-IN subdirectory of the gateway.

This is where you can run into an issue today. Some mobile operators have their MMSCs behind firewalls, and the URL is not accessible over the internet, so NowSMS cannot retrieve the MMS message content.

We're addressing this consideration in the upcoming v5.0 release. For situations where the operator has firewalled off the MMSC, NowSMS can be configured to initiate a GPRS connection over the modem, and fetch the MMS message content from the MMSC via the operator WAP gateway. So essentially, NowSMS looks like an MMS client running directly on the mobile phone, and firewalls are not an issue.

The best advice right now is to try it, and see what happens. Your operator might not be running a setup with their MMSC behind a firewall.

Without waiting for the beta release of v5.0 to be made available out here ... an alternative if you have a limited number of phones that need to be able to send MMS into your site, is that you can configure the phones to use the NowSMS server as their MMSC, bypassing the operator MMSC and bypassing the firewall issue.

If it all sounds more confusing than it should be ... it is. When we first added MMS features into NowSMS, I never imagined that we would be adding a WAP client stack into the software...

-bn
someone
Posted on Saturday, October 04, 2003 - 09:27 pm:   

If i wanted to send some pictures from my computer, could i do it without direct connection to the cable via internet, or mms, like send it to my phones mms? (my phone does not have internet access)
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 08:22 pm:   


quote:

If i wanted to send some pictures from my computer, could i do it without direct connection to the cable via internet, or mms, like send it to my phones mms? (my phone does not have internet access)




If your operator supported this. You would need to inquire with your operator as to whether or not this is possible.
abe
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 09:25 pm:   

twins
abe
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 09:31 pm:   

sorry about that, i mistook this for something it was not.
channi
Unregistered guest
Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 09:32 am:   

hai
Andy
Unregistered guest
Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 05:04 am:   

hey everybody,
could someone please explain to me why my friends (1 Nokia user and 2 Motorolas, all T-Mobile) cannot recieve MMS messages I send and I cannot see the ones they send me? This is frusturating...
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 1603
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 06:15 pm:   


quote:

could someone please explain to me why my friends (1 Nokia user and 2 Motorolas, all T-Mobile) cannot recieve MMS messages I send and I cannot see the ones they send me? This is frusturating...




Without considerably more detail, no it is not likely that we can tell you.

T-Mobile in what country?

Can each person send an MMS to themselves?

Perhaps configuration settings are different on the different phones.

There's likely not much that I can do to help. But I'd suggest some basic troubleshooting. Have each phone attempt to send to the other phones (including sending to self). Note what works, and what does not work. Perhaps a pattern will emerge.
Deepali
Unregistered guest
Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 01:17 pm:   

Does nowSMS exposes java/C/C++ apis for developers for sending messages and processing incoming messages
Marty
New member
Username: Marty

Post Number: 36
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 11:10 am:   

Are you sure all settings are correct: GPRS APN, ISP etc?
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 1674
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 07:39 pm:   


quote:

Does nowSMS exposes java/C/C++ apis for developers for sending messages and processing incoming messages




The APIs are HTTP based.

To send a message, you open an HTTP connection to NowSMS.

Info on sending SMS:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/sending_messages/sendin g_text_messages.htm
http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/sending_messages/url_pa rameters_for_sending_messages.htm
http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/867.html

Info on sending MMS:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/Submitting_MMS_Messages.htm
http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/1113.html

When NowSMS, receives a message, it typically routes it to your application over HTTP.

Receiving SMS info:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/2_way_sms_support.htm
http://www.nowsms.com/support/bulletins/tb-nowsms-003.htm
Receiving MMS info:

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


Anonymous
 
Posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2004 - 05:00 pm:   

how come each time i try sending a sms on my nokia mobile it doesnt send, i get the message 'message sending failed' what can i do to overcome this problem?
Dimo Todorov Todorov
New member
Username: Baal98

Post Number: 1
Registered: 03-2004
Posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 02:19 pm:   

Tova e proba.