Pagers were once a great way to get a message to someone out in public; they just had to be cool enough to have one. These days, they’re mostly the preserve of doctors and a few other niche operators. [Kyle Tryon] is bringing the beeper back, though, with a custom ESP32-based build.
The ESP32 is a great microcontroller for this kind of project, because it’s got WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity built right in. This let [Kyle] write some straightforward code so that it could receive alerts via MQTT. In particular, it’s set up to go off whenever there’s an app or service notification fired off by the Sentry platform. For [Kyle]’s line of work, it’s effectively an on-call beeper that calls them in when a system needs immediate attention. When it goes off, it plays the ringtone of your choice—with [Kyle] making it capable of playing tunes in Nokia’s old-school RTTTL music format.
The code was simple enough, and the assembly wasn’t much harder. By starting with an Adafruit ESP32 Reverse TFT Feather, the screen and buttons were all ready to go right out of the box. [Kyle] merely had to print up a rad translucent case on a resin printer to make it look like a sweet fashionable beeper from the 90s.
It’s a fun little project that should prove useful, while also being nicely reminiscent of a technology that has largely fallen by the wayside.
Might be easy to upgrade with some ultra bright flashing LEDs and strong vibration alert. Clip-on to the front of your belt in a loud workshop w/ hearing protection in use. I never feel my phone when operating a lathe.
Beepers never went away. They still make them, sell them, and provide service for them.
The reason theyre still popular with hospitals is that hospitals generally do not use a service provider but rather have their own transmitter giving them nearly bulletproof communications with their staff within a 30-50 mile range. As long as the hospitals backup generators are running they can push notifications regardless of the status of cell networks or the internet.
This is just a wifi notification gadget.
this one might be just wifi, but a LORA version could be made giving it a lot of range
I learned something new today, I thought they still used pagers but it didn’t occur to me that it would be feasible for the hospital to have a transmitter
FCC part 90 Licensing runs just shy of $1k for a 10 year license.
Transmitters typically cost between $3-10K depending on features. though the antenna can run almost as much unless youre building is pretty tall. But even still, given that the typical system can support over a million unique pager ids, its an incredibly cost effective solution.
Edit youre to your.
No thanks:
https://www.paubox.com/blog/hospital-pagers-hipaa-violation-phi
Especially with hacks transmitting patient names over them unencrypted. Room number would have been smarter, but you cannot trust staffers.
Yeah and?
Encrypted options exist and are widely used.
Many hospitals who do not upgrade to encrypted systems are the same ones that didnt bother upgrading to alphanumeric systems, theyre still sending their docs numeric pages.
Bad policy can allow any technology to cause hippa violations.
It’s a HIPAA violation, no “ands” and “buts”. Scan for ’em, report em, get people who disrespect privacy sued.
Privacy is a civil liberty and right.
Privacy is a myth.
HIPPA was enacted to make the echange of this data easier by standardization and to control fraud. Privacy was just the public forward selling point.
You can tilt at windmills all you like, Instances of improper implementation exist for any communication technology. Pager systems are highly effective in disaster and emergency situations. Your article is 7.5 years old and hospitals are still paging doctors. I seriously doubt their going anywhere anytime soon.
Edit Their to they’re oops
Your sentiment explains why flock and ring doorbells are a thing.
I will not have it, Louis Rossman is showing how to fix it. City councils are being briefed by citizens. People are becoming aware. And for pagers, apathy certainly is not the solution.
“Nothing to hide” was always the biggest fallacy to surrender all of your rights. I got nothing to show, because it’s none of their business what I LEGALLY do in private.
Rage against the machine kiddo. It will only raise your blood pressure. Weve all given up privacy for convenience. Everyones everything is metered and marketed. Go hide in a cave and enjoy your bliss!
Before my home town received cellular coverage the local pulp mill had one of these systems for reaching managers. One cool thing was that the beep and vibrate alerts on their pagers would wake the dead; nothing before or since compared. It was 30 years ago and I can’t recall the brand name of their system.
medical guy here. Pager is still the best. has been for the last 20 years I’ve been at it. we have alphanumeric pagers and the benefits are a lot:
as noted- bulletproof infrastructure
– when on call, 20 year old habit is don’t leave home without the physical pager. Developed before “don’t leave home without the cell phone” was ingrained.
-no muted cellphone alert to miss (asleep, in car, whatever)
-the alert tone is now part of my subconscious. Will wake me up 100% of the time.
-big one- battery is a single AA and lasts for about 2 months, on 24/7. And when it gets low, you have another week or so to change it.
-another biggie- paging someone is juuuusst enough of a pain that if you page someone, it is for a good reason.
and many more reasons.
I was counting today, the hospital has 6 ways (!!!) of getting a hold of me ranging from just call my cell phone up through the several independent secured/encrypted methods, most of which require the use of my personal cell phone and I refuse to permit that. but pager still far and away the best.
If you can forego the AI-written “operating system” with games and a menu structure, this is stupidly easy to do in ESPhome: Subscribe a text sensor to an MQTT topic, on incoming message update the screen and beep the beeper (ESPhome has rtttl.beep). I have one on my desk for alerts, just not on my belt with a battery.
NOTE: This is not a pager. It uses the local network.
That “reverse” tft esp32 “feather” board from Adafruit is so slept on! I know it’s called “reverse” because seeing the screen requires a different mounting than the other feathers, but it should be considered the default feather-with-a-screen. The “normal” tft the feather is already nice, but the extra buttons on the reverse make it so nice for moderately interactive things right out of the box. If they could find a way to fit a little piezo beeper onto it, and maybe a neopixel or even plain led on the TFT side for alerts (since it’s so easy to sleep the screen and go into power sipping mode), it would be ultimate.
Yes I know a beeper or speaker could be added with the stemma port, but so could the screen, and it’s the OOB-nothing-else-needed-except-power factor that I’m thinking of.
huhhhhh comments got absolutely nuked!
TLDR i’m one of the medical people and for a ton of reasons pager is still way better than every other option.