forward SMS messages to EMail (looking for cheap way)

Question

I'm not sure if this question is within the goal of this site, but I'm sure it has lots of smart IT guys that can help.

I have about 50 phone numbers (real GSM SIM numbers, not VOIP), and I'm getting texts to all of them.

Is there any possible way to forward the texts from all phone numbers onto one E-Mail?

I looked into connecting cheap cellphones to PC and writing a program that would read the texts and forward them on the mail, by my calculations it will be at least $30 per phone.

It's also possible to write an app for Android or iPhone, and use these phones to directly forward texts to eMail, without a PC. But these phones are expensive. Also about $20-40 per card.

Looked into Chinese SIM card stations that support 50 cards, but these are couple of thousand dollars.

Is there any other way to do this, that is not so expensive? Thanks.

Answer 1

Get a google voice number and set all the phones up under one account, then set google to handle SMS. from there it's just a few FWD rules. I'm not sure if there is a limitation on the number of devices under one google voice number.

Answer 2

There is also the "Smushbox" (a kickstarter project). Basically, it's an embedded box that takes a t-mobile SIM. You send messages to it, and it receives them, and delivers them on an ethernet port.

But why buy the Smushbox? This could be very easily done with an old Android phone. Simply write an app that does the following:

1. Create a service thread that listens for SMS broadcast intents (When an SMS arrives)
2. Pick up the message
3. Open a TCP connection and send that message out to somewhere else (maybe in XMPP?)
4. On the same XMPP interface, listen for a new inbound message
5. Upon message receipt, send that message to the SMS intent.