Key Features
Tech Stack
Landing page (doesn't link to anything): https://fob.launchbowl.com/
A little word dump of thoughts at the start of the journey: https://launchbowl.com/e_ink_pager
Your project seems really cool and allows you to bring your own hardware. Out of curiosity, have you blocked all notifications on your phone? Would this be run on your computer? Would you ever move in the direction of a physical device?
I just have a pretty strong desire to get my anonymity back when I want it. Not because I need it but just to feel free again.
I have and use one, partially for the reasons you list above.
[•] Not a representative of the company, just a very happy customer.
Thanks for the tip though!
I still use one which gets one-way service from <https://pagersdirect.net/> (~$10/mo, with phone number). Most US cities, large and small, still have active infrastructure. I live in a city with a few hundred thousand people, great coverage.
This has replaced my cell phone, which I no longer carry.
For those interested, Pagers Direct has an email-to-pager option (I don't use it, phone digits only please caller, after the beep). It also has two-way pagers, which I have no experience with.
One caution: for one-way pagers, if you're out of range (does not use traditional cellular infrastructure, instead a different frequency) when somebody sends you text, you will never get the message (no handshake/confirmation).
>builds simple, DIY kits for them
So I highly doubt this would be profitable for you.
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As far as the paging infrastructure is concerned, all the messages are mass-sent, in an un-encrypted analogue broadcast. EVERY device receives EVERY page, as long as within range. It is the pager itself which chooses to only display "your" message(s).
Your DIY hardware could lead you into some interesting discoveries of your local area's messaging/users.
Got lots of server health messages and requests to call people back. And some more personal messages, too.
That vibe is reflected in the 9/11 pager messages as well... https://911.wikileaks.org/
>I'd love to hear your thoughts on the IP-to-Phone-Number mapping logic (it's purely visual, but I'm really into it).
Personally, this seems like a really bad idea. The similarity to actual phone numbers might lead to confusion by non-technical high-trust contactors. Worse (e.g.) if the IP were 91.1x.x.x then this could lead to further confusion &/or erroneous 9-1-1 misdials (by inept contactors).
>where you only want interruptions from a high-trust circle
I don't even have a phone contact number anymore. After you page me, I'll VoIP you back from an outbound-only.
But overall I LOVE that you have attempted this; only real problem for your average installer/recipient is that most home ISPs are firewalled (so a UDP7777 inbound isn't possible), but this obviously isn't for even your average technical installer.
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Just leave me alone, world/SPAMmers!
How do you prevent malicious actors from invading your 7777UDPs?
Depending on how internet-proof you want to make this, I wonder if it might be better to sign with a secret and attach the signature to the message instead of directly sending the secret.
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Public WhoIS registrant:
Chris [redacted]
The Dosyago Corporation
Beaverton, Oregon
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OP has 2 year old /hn/ account, with ~11k karma
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I have no made no further investigations, but obviously haven't installed this myself (as I have an IRL pager that solves similar issues to OP's).
> The system is intentionally raw. No headers, no JSON, no XML.
> Transport: UDP Port 7777
> Encoding: UTF-8 Plain Text
> Format: [SECRET::]MESSAGE
you dont get it, the protocol is flawless
> Only messages matching your Secret Key will ring.
I assume that's the "Secret Key" is placed in this prefix tag, '[SECRET::]' ?
Since plain-text over UDP is not very secret, I'm now motivated to look into how Wireguard is able to use PKI to only accept packets from a trusted clients. And, how that protocol could be used to generate the Secrey Key.
Definitely old but highly reliable.
An attacker would need a lot of fairly powerful jamming equipment just to disrupt a small area of it. And our customer would advise us pretty quickly if their personnel were having reception issues and our field engineers would diagnose the source of the interference pretty quickly. So no.
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