I am wondering what the standard tool is for sending and receiving SMS and MMS on a device that does not have a SIM card in it.
Is there some tool that can do it natively? Is there a specific carrier that is commonly used for this? Is there some sort of selfhosted service that bridges it to email, and if so do I need to put a SIM card in my server?
Bonus points if I can do it within Emacs.
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KDE Connect?
Problem solved. You can close this thread now. 🤣
I tried to use it for a long time but the amount of bugs and unreliability really forced me to stop using it.
You could use a matrix bridge (matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges) or use KDE connect
Note: these solutions assume you have a phone
You can also use a VoIP service to send and receive SMS.
Depends on what you are trying achieve.
You can send sms via foss no problem as long as you know what carrier the recipient uses. All of the carriers seem to have email bridges to the sms network. Receiving sms is another question entirely. To receive sms, the network needs to know where to send the message. There are commercial platforms that can link you into the sms network.
Another option is KDEConnect which can link your Android device to your computer and you can send and receive sms that way.
Most VoIP providers have either an HTTP API you can hit and/or email to/from text.
Additionally, some carriers do offer an email address that can be used to send a text to one of their users but due to spam it’s usually pretty restricted.
Interesting. Can you give an example?
Example of what?
VoIP provider: voip.ms
They support like 5 different ways to deal with SMS and MMS, there’s options. https://wiki.voip.ms/article/SMS-MMS
Carrier that accepts texts by email: Bell Canada accepts emails at NUMBER@txt.bell.ca and deliver it as SMS or MMS to the number. Or at least they used to, I can’t find current documentation about it and that feels like something that would be way too exploitable for spam.
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I don’t know if it’s what you want but on Linux I had guiscrcpy to open my phone screen as a window and control it with my keyboard and mouse seamlessly. Nowadays I have switched to kdeconnect (there’s gsconnect for gtk desktops environments)
Does it allow for a screenshare feature like what you describe with guiscrcpy?
No, but there are key steps in the installation process that are different. Guiscrcpy uses a binary blob, I’m unsure on how safe it is. Meanwhile, kdeconnect is open source and has many interesting features of their own. (Sending links to open a website between devices, using it in combination with openvpn, and so on…)
You can use a VoIP or SIP provider and then to send SMS and MMS messages you can install an app called Chatty: https://flathub.org/apps/sm.puri.Chatty
You could run this: https://salsa.debian.org/sms4you-team/sms4you
Meshtastic
How would this transfer SMS to desktop?
Well you’d start here
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/how-use-meshtastic/
You self host a comms server, i use matrix, and that forwards the message to you.
If you’re directly tied to the SMS protocol you can setup a repeater here https://hackaday.com/2022/02/21/an-off-grid-makeshift-cell-network/
Then it’s meshtastic -> Matrix -> SMS gateway
Been a few years since using Emacs extensively. From memory, IRC is a good fit for what you are after for texts and some emojis. No clue regarding multimedia messages.
If IRC is acceptable
Make your own channel on say, Libera chat, set your own rules for how long those messages are retained. Make a user for each of your devices. You are set. I’ve used ERC a few years under Emacs. Also used GNUS for reading and writing emails from the big providers.
