connecting computer to a mobile phone - reading sms and use it?

Question

I've absolutely no idea if this is possible and how it would work.

is it possible to give users a phonenumber where they should send an sms to. e.g. the sms contains

name
some code

• i want to track how many sms are sent to this number.
• i want to read the sms text and use both nodes

they weird way i imagine this: i buy a prepaid simcard from any phone provider, i plug the simcard into any device (sim-reader :) ) connected to my computer. my computer is ONLINE. so my computer is kind of transformed to a mobile phone. some software is able to retrieve those sms and i can use the data in it.

is that even possible, if yes HOW?

Answer 1

There are several possibilities listed here. But it depends on the phone you are using. Symbian, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile. But basically it is possible using a GSM Modem.

Answer 2

You can use e.g. gammu to send and receive SMS from a cellphone connected to your computer - essentially creating a SMS gateway. I've succesfully used it in the past in this setup (newer phones have serial port emulation through USB, for older ones you need a model-specific serial-to-phone cable):

my program <-> database/textfiles <-> gammu <-> serial port <-> cellphone

The operation was as follows:

• gammu ran in the command line/daemon mode, with a watchdog script restarting it (and the cellphone) if the cellphone became unresponsive (this was a really old phone; a watchdog is probably not necessary with anything > 2006)
• gammu polled the cellphone for new messages, those were store into a "received" table in the database.
• gammu also polled an "outgoing" table in the database for messages I wanted to send, and sent them through the cellphone.
• my program was a web frontend for reading the incoming messages or inserting the outgoing ones.

(Gammu has an API to interface with the cellphone directly, without the database; I decided to keep the backend and frontend parts separate, and since the frontend was using the database for other things anyway, it was easiest to go that way; also, I was using an old phone for this, and needed the frontend to run even if the cellphone wasn't responding)