Pagers were a big deal for a while there, even if they never quite made it into the pantheon of excellent sitcom plot devices like answering machines did. Anyway, [Finnley Dolfin] had some pagers and gave them a refresh for the modern era, using them to receive message alerts from Mastodon.
The project is laced together with a bunch of Python code. It uses the Mastodon library for interacting with the social media website. When it detects an incoming direct message, it hooks into DAPNET – the Decentralized Amateur Paging Network. Via this network, a message is sent out over the airwaves to [Finnley’s] pager, serving as a notification that someone’s reached out to chat on Mastodon.
It’s neat that the amateur radio world is keeping pagers alive, using distributed base stations to share messages. Unfortunately, given the existence of smartphones, we don’t quite see pagers catching on again any time soon. And yet, [Finnley’s] setup has a certain level of old-school cool that no modern phone could match.
We’ve seen only a handful of pager hacks over the years, but they’re still pretty neat. If you’ve got your own cooking up in the workshop, drop us a line, yeah?
neat project I wish I’d do to put right next the minitel terminal ^^
>> even if they never quite made it into the pantheon of excellent sitcom plot devices
No props for Dennis Duffy, Beeper King?
>> plot devices like answering machines
Rockford
No Bob Pataki, of Big Bobs Beeper Emporium either…
DAPNET is a great initiative. If you just want to send messages within your place, you can use a Raspberry pi and a simple nice little program that makes use of the integrated PLL for transmitting pocsag messages: https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx/
Pager style devices are already becoming popular again, check out meshtastic :-)
meshtastic.org is similar and no licence needed