MMS direct to your homepage

[Guest budda]

I uncovered an interesting idea for a little use of the SPV camera...

A bloke has written a PHP script to sit on a server and handle MMS requests. See his page here.

Basically he explains that you re-configure your phone to point to your server where you install the PHP script - when you send a MMS it then goes to your server rather than the Orange one. His idea was the ability to send photos from his phone to his homepage to generate a photo diary. The downfall of this is that MMS doesn't work across networks or abroad from what i'm told. But it could still be good within the UK?

has anybody played with this idea already? Would it be a way around the over-priced sending of photo messages via the Orange network server? Not quite sure where you set the MMS server on the SPV phone though?

[Guest budda]

I've just installed the scripts on my webspace to give it a go. However when configuring my phone (using the app in Accessories) I'm not sure what the difference is between:

IP: 192.168.224.10

and

Mmsc Address: http://mms.orange.co.uk

Which (or both?) do I stick my URL in which points to the mmsdiary/send.php script? Any ideas?

I stuck my URL in the Mmsc field, and the IP address of the server hosting it in the IP field. I then attempted to send an MMS. It starts off promising, connects to GPRS progress bar, then a sending progress bar appears - this moves up slightly as the animation repeats - then gives up and moves my message to the drafts folder :cry:

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

It seems the IP is the IP of the box you are sending through, and the MMSC address is the address this IP resolves to.

See: http://www.ihub.com/Your%20own%20MMSC!.htm for more details.

[Guest peffis]

Hi,

I happen to be that "bloke" who wrote that MMS Diary thingie. :-)

I don't know much about the SPV (I came here for other reasons) so I cannot tell you about howto set it up but I can make some guess perhaps.

MMS is sent over WAP using regular WAP POST. The WAP GW translates this request into a regular HTTP POST - that's why it's so easy to implement a fake MMSC using regular HTTP-tools such as PHP for instance.

So given that I would make a guess that the "IP: 192.168.224.10" would probably be your WAP-GW and you should not alter that unless you have another GW somewhere that you can access from the IP-access your operator provides you with.

That IP address you have is a local address (192.168.x.y) so it seems your operator uses NAT-ing which could be a sign that they might also have enabled blocking of alternative MMSC:s. Several operators employ this nowadays I'm afraid and if Orange do you cannot use "free" MMS services like this one since they are tying you up to their servers (they only allow traffic that gets them income).

But you can try it out anyway by keeping the IP-setting and setting the MMSC-address to the full URL of your script (such as http://<your-domain>/testing/send.php for instance). At least that's my guess anyway unless the SPV has another setting for the PATH on the MMSC somewhere. Then try to send an MMS. If it still fails it might be the case that Orange is blocking this as I said. If you get a log entry on your web server and it still fails somehow it might be the case that my parsing of the message fails somehow. It has only been tested with Ericsson and Nokia phones so far. Perhaps Microsoft is doing things differently (wouldn't surprise me :-) )

As for using this MMS Diary as a way to get around the cost of MMS:es it is not what you are looking for. The Diary does only put the pictures on the web and does no sending of MMS notifications to the receiving phone. It would be possible to implement it (and not that hard) but it would still cost money I'm afraid since you need to send the notification over SMS and they cost money. But if MMS:es cost much more than two SMS:es then it might be worth it. Of course, if you don't require more than just showing your content on a web page then it is free of course if your operator allows postings to other MMSC:s than their own. Free as in "no more cost than traffic cost" of course.

Cheers,

Stefan

[Guest slider]

Okie dokie guys, let's see if i can clear all this up for ya all.... First off the MMS settings are changed in the MMS setup program in the accessories folder on the SPV, can't quite remember how on the E200 buf definately on the SPV & E100.

Second..

As our friend points out if you wanna put pics on your site, this should work, the free MMS thing on the other hand wont work, why.

Well first there's a 3 way authentication using a large look up database and MISDN's, involving not only the MMSC but a few other machines too, the MISDN of the sender is the only time this is transmitted, all the rest is retrived and matched etc internally.

Then there's the SMC side of things to worry about (And yes you will get charged for this), again a 3 way conversation between several servers.

I suppose you could do it if you had access to several *nix boxes and the correct software, but it's complex and not easy to maintain.

You also got to take into account the MMS/GPRS APN's, you'd need to register your own, aswell as make the phone use it, and since the MMS client uses some hardcoded info and some user alterable your probably gonna need to write your own client.

Finally as if that's not enough you need to get the protocol spec's and SMC/MMSC timing absolutley spot on, if not the whole cycle will just colapse around your feet.

Trust me on this one, i have all the block diagrams etc and the tech info and it's quite complex.

If you want an easier way, use the MTA/Email interfaces..

Cheers

Slider