I got an email from Alex from over at Tinkerlog.com about his newest project. He has taken a GSM board that has GPS built in, and has connected it to an Atmega 8 microcontroller.
That was over my head, so I looked up GSM, and found it in wikipedia to mean:
The Global System for Mobile communications (GSM: originally from Groupe Spécial Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM service is used by over 2 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories.[1][2] Its ubiquity makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital call quality, and so is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system.
A GSM module is basically the brains of a cellular phone. You can see the above picture from sparkfun. This device works like a cell phone. All you have to do is connect it to a microcontroller and send strings to it, and you can be making a call. For example, if you send “ATD 3035551234″ to the module it will make a call, and then it sets up a serial connection that will allow you to send strings to it. You can also connect a speaker and microphone to the device and talk like a cell phone.
If you want GPS information you simply have to send the module something like this:
Request GPS
AT$GPSACP got: AT$GPSACP
GPSACP: 131924.999,5333.9291N,00954.8841E,2.6,34.0,3,29.78,0.32,0.17,130707,07
OK
You could just as easily send a text message with your coordinates.
Now all of that brings me to the cool project that can be done with this module. The above picture is from sparkfun, and shows the insides of the rotary cellphone. It basically uses the device above, and a microcontroller. The controller decodes the rotary portion of the phone. The speaker and microphone are connected to the module. When the receiver is picked up, it powers the controller, which waits for the number to dial. After the number is dialed, the microcontroller sends the number to the GSM module, and dials it. You talk like normal, and when the handset is placed back down, it ends the phone call.
Now how about that for a cool project.
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