[tpoacher]

I was part of a project at Oxford where we installed sms transmitters on waterpump handles in Kenya, which sent sms signals giving us data about the pumphandle's movement (and therefore water consumption, and state of the pump).

It was amazing how much we could do with SMS. It really is a great medium.

If I remember correctly, we used FrontlineSMS https://www.frontlinesms.com/ It worked very well. I can't remember the exact details now, but I think the messages were sent to a modem, connected to a PC which ran frontlinesms, which automatically triggered actions depending on the nature of the incoming sms.

Later on I think we switched to a completely managed solution, which stored the data for us and allowed us to download from the 'cloud'. The "modem connected to a computer" thing sounds more like what you're after, but conceivably with the right scripts you could also make use of a cloud solution.