Cellular Modems for SMS Notifications

Ignition
1

Hello all,

I have been troubleshooting the Twilio service that handles SMS notifications. After spending much of the day working on this the customer would now like to switch to using a cellular modem rather than using Twilio. I have been researching the user manual for information on how to move forward on this transition. I saw that Inductive Automation officially supports three Airlink devices, the RV50/RV50X, RV55, and LX40. All these devices are Sierra Wireless devices. Is there something that makes these modems so special? The customer I am working with already has Cradlepoints and I would like to know if these could be used instead.

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Yes, Ignition's SMS module isn't for use with generic SMS modems, it's for a proprietary API supported by the Sierra Wireless modems.

I would try to convince your customer to stick with Twilio if you can. The days where Joe Schmoe can buy a cellular modem and blast out SMS indiscriminately are quickly coming to an end. In 5 years or less I'd bet that's just not a thing any more. It'll be a quaint memory, like how you could run your own email server a decade or two ago and actually expect it to work.

3 Likes
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I still run two email servers.

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I absolutely knew you ran at least one email server and was thinking about it when I wrote that. I almost tagged you. But running your own mail server makes you an anachronism at this point.

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Yes, to some extent. Which is just sad.

There is plenty of activity from us little people on SMTP/IMAP-focused mailing lists, and the recipes to have a mail server play nicely in the modern world are well documented (locked-down relaying, then SPF and DKIM, most importantly). It isn't trivial, but it is not rocket science. Anyone who can set up their own cloud server with DNS and reverse DNS should grok the email requirements in DNS, too.

Setting up for private/internal use IS trivial. Enterprises that don't do so for their automation requirements make me scratch my head.

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The only thing I didn't like about OS/2 was that I had to run a mail server when all I wanted was a mail client.

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7

Kevin,

I am confused by your prediction. I am using the Sierra Wireless SMS alarming on several projects and don't want that to stop working. How is an RV50 connected to Ignition's SMS alarming module any different from the cellular provider's perspective than Joe Schmoe with a smart phone?

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Because Joe and his smart phone can't realistically set up a spam operation.

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My prediction is not an indicator that IA is going to stop supporting these modules/hardware or do anything to make it stop working... just my prediction on where the celluar/telco industry is heading...

If nothing else, there will be more regulatory hoops to jump through. We already saw this with Twilio 10DLC registration.

1 Like