GSM - Arduino Sketches: Tools and Techniques for Programming Wizardry - page 272

The hardware needed to use these functions includes

Arduino Uno

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Arduino GSM Shield

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Active SIM card

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1 x Reed switch

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You can i nd the code download for this chapter at http://www.wiley.com/
go/arduinosketches on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 17
folder and the i lename is Chapter17.ino .

Introducing GSM

One of the many things that dei nes the human race is our capacity to communi-
cate. Throughout our inventions, we have developed ways to express ourselves,
and to talk to more and more people, further and further away. Try to imagine
life without a mobile phone, or any sort of telephone. How do you tell someone
something? There are still options available to you; you could write a letter (a
real letter, not an e-mail, one with pen and paper). It would take a day or two to
arrive, and the recipient would read it when he arrived home (or at the ofi ce).
You could also leave the house to see the person, either by going to her house,
business, or a common meeting place (the town square, or even a restaurant).
Neither of these options are as fast as dialing them up.
Of course, things do change. When writing this topic, I am constantly in contact
with my publisher and editor. I pick up my mobile phone, and call a number,
and a few seconds later, another telephone rings, separated by a wide distance.
I am in Europe, and they are in the United States. No matter where I am, either
at home in France, or on a business trip to England, Brazil, or Singapore, people
can get ahold of me. The international telephone network connects millions
upon millions of people together, at distances that span the entire world, but
the ability to place telephone calls is only one aspect of this network.

Mobile Data Network

Long gone are the days when a mobile telephone was used only for placing
phone calls. Today, even the most basic of phones can receive network data as
either text or multimedia messages. More advanced phones can receive e-mails,
browse websites, or even stream high-quality videos through advanced data
networks. We can be almost anywhere and still receive Facebook requests and
spam messages. Times have indeed changed.