ElecSparky (Customer) asked a question.
Email to Text.
I have used email to text services a lot by sending emails out from Cmore and/or Productivity, and recently my cell provider (which is Bell here in Canada) stopped providing that service. Does ADC have a controller that could support texts? If not, I would like to know of a device or service that would support that. Evan a device that would support a sim card. Any ideas or thoughts?
We use Red Lion HMIs and their email alarm notification capability. Years ago, I built screens that allow the end users to enter their phone numbers and select the carrier from a dropdown list and the HMI uses a lookup table (actually a multistate tag) to automatically build the "mail to" string for all the users enabled to receive the texts.
To allow those HMIs to work when their IP configuration is set to Manual (static IP), and to handle authentication issues that became more and more burdensome, we enlisted the services of a company called AuthSMTP. They charge a small annual fee that allows us to send up to 10,000 messages per month.
They provided me with a static IP address that I enter in the Red Lion Mail Server IP address field along with my account credentials. This worked flawlessly until one very popular cellular provider eliminated their email to SMS gateway. So, in order to make this easy to alter on dozens of existing HMIs, we enlisted another service from ClickSend.
They provide email to SMS services for any provider as well as very good text to speech conversion. This service charges us a tiny amount per message. This amounts to quite a bit more cost to us than AuthSMTP alone, so we began to offer it as an annual service contract for customers who want it and charge them enough so that we can break even. So now, my Red Lion can send emails and/or voice alerts, the latter can even be sent to a landline.
All I have to do on my end is use the AuthSMTP registered From Address in my HMI setup and append the ten digit phone number with @sms.clicksend.com or @voice.clicksend.com or both depending on what the operator selects.
I could probably now do away with AuthSMTP now and just send these straight to ClickSend, but many of our customers still use providers that maintain email to SMS services for free.
https://www.clicksend.com/us/
https://www.authsmtp.com/
Thanks so much for the pointer. Will look into this:)
I have my Ammonia Chiller system monitored by a Sensaphone Sentinel System.. Think it's $85 usd a year subscription.. The Hardware installed and Programmed was ~$8k usd.. it's Lan Connected to 3 AB PLC's.. Cloud will report if it has not checked in by what ever Interval you program it for..
It will text or E-mail, or Phone Call Dial..
https://sensaphone.com/sentinels
Cap