Billy talks more about how he built the SMS door lock control:
What’s the story behind your project?
BC: I wanted to build a way to get into our office without using keys. My phone felt like the next logical choice to open the door with because I always have it. Instead of building an app, I wanted a way that anyone with any phone could get in [...] Text messages were the logical choice.
What technologies are you using?
BC: I’m using something called a Parallax Spinneret Webserver. It’s a tiny little webserver and it’s connected to the door and also the internet. All of the source code can be found on GitHub.
Twilio has the added bonus of having a log of all the text messages, so I can easily figure out problems and also see if there was any attempted unauthorized access.
Runners Up
In addition to Billy’s winning entry, we have selected three runners up who will each receive $100 in Twilio credit.
Blizzalert by James Chevalier
Blizzalert is a simple SMS-based system for receiving snow forecasts for 400+ ski areas across the US. James recently blogged about creating Blizzalert. The post discusses how James combined NOAA weather data, Twilio and Recurly for payments to build the app. Congrats James!
TextLang by Ilya Volodarksy
TextLang uses the Google Translate and Google Text-to-Speech APIs to transform text sent via SMS into a translated audio listened to via phone call. Ilya and his family are Russian immigrants and TextLang has helped them learn English phrases. Ilya is a student at MIT and built the site using Django. Congrats Ilya!
hipfone.me by Kunal Batra
We’ve extended the deadline for the “Coordinating People” contest category started last week. Get your entries in by this Sunday!