Description
I had a big problem in the last few months, and this problem made me spend a lot of money at the end of the month. This because I was too lazy to buy a "home card" and digit the aboard number.
The solution came quickly after I decided to make my life easier and less expensive, and I came up with the Arduino Caller.
Arduino Caller
The Arduino Caller is basically: one Arduino, two gsm shields and one Ethernet shield.
My theory was:
- One GSM shield with the same network as my current sim, in this case I have free calls
- One GSM shield with one of the cheap sim card to call aboard
- Connect these two shields to talk each others without using the GSM network
After few research I found a cheap and good GSM shield that allowed me to make the "bridge connection" with two audio extensions.
Android
I couldn't complete the whole project without a "nice" application that would help me to make the phone call within one tap.
I made a simple Android app that retrieves all contact from my phone and I can call one of them by using my Arduino Caller.
My theory was pretty forward:
- Get the list of my contacts
- When pressed the number, send it to the "http server"
- Call the number from the GSM shield ( the free one from my network )
Conclusion
I am still testing the whole system, but so far I managed to call few times my parents spending just 1-2 pounds.
Also the quality is good, I tried some VOIP services that made my voice funny and some lags or jumps.
I am sure that I need to add few more amends to make my software stable.
I had a big problem in the last few months, and this problem made me spend a lot of money at the end of the month. This because I was too lazy to buy a "home card" and digit the aboard number.
The solution came quickly after I decided to make my life easier and less expensive, and I came up with the Arduino Caller.
Arduino Caller
The Arduino Caller is basically: one Arduino, two gsm shields and one Ethernet shield.
My theory was:
- One GSM shield with the same network as my current sim, in this case I have free calls
- One GSM shield with one of the cheap sim card to call aboard
- Connect these two shields to talk each others without using the GSM network
After few research I found a cheap and good GSM shield that allowed me to make the "bridge connection" with two audio extensions.
Android
I couldn't complete the whole project without a "nice" application that would help me to make the phone call within one tap.
I made a simple Android app that retrieves all contact from my phone and I can call one of them by using my Arduino Caller.
My theory was pretty forward:
- Get the list of my contacts
- When pressed the number, send it to the "http server"
- Call the number from the GSM shield ( the free one from my network )
Conclusion
I am still testing the whole system, but so far I managed to call few times my parents spending just 1-2 pounds.
Also the quality is good, I tried some VOIP services that made my voice funny and some lags or jumps.
I am sure that I need to add few more amends to make my software stable.
