access aim via console

[USSEnterprise]

Hi.
I am working on a project with some people at Infoage to make a model 15 teletype receive text messages from a cell phone. At some point, I determined that one can send a text message to an AIM account, which could connect via terminal to the TTY interface program being used, and send it to the 15. I thought I had found proof that I could talk to AIM through the windows telnet client, but I can't seem to find that proof. Any ideas?

 

[TNC]

Look at centerim or finch (pidgin with console interface). You could also try Bitlbee, which is an irc gateway to sveral instant messaging protocols.

 

[barythrin]

Not sure if they're still playing corporate games but I do recall AOL trying to disallow non-AOL clients from connecting to their network, so depending on the documentation you find it may be outdated. Are you trying to write the code and run it on the 15 or just use the 15 as a serial console to the windows box which does all the work? Maybe this will give you a start on coding your own client? (it's a pdf*) Unfortunately it looks like more of an assignment for a college course but if you poke around or take the challenge yourself in writing something with the TOC2 protocol which per that text says it's documented maybe that will give you a start.

-John

 

[mark66j]

Any chance you could use Twitter instead of AIM? Downloading tweets seems to be fairly simple and well documented, and has been done on a bunch of low-end systems.

 

[barythrin]

Alternatively some phones have some sort of API as well. I know a friend who had a regular sprint flip phone but found a dev kit for it and had it connected to his system via (probably usb) but could send and see sms in a window on his system. Perhaps a linux based phone would have some interesting options its usb connection to a serial port. One other glued together hack I was thinking would be to save the messages to a text file if you're using an additional computer then output the text file to the serial port connected to the terminal, but again if you can do it just with the terminal; that's pretty sweet