[Torchris] comes back from a little pause with a nice step by step tutorial on a mail receiver.

I will post the software in subsequent entries, but for now I will just explain that I decided to go with using a mail “pre-processor” application written in PHP. Originally I wanted to do everything on the Arduino so it would be a complete, stand-alone solution, but, alas, it just proved to be too hard for the Arduino’s limited text processing abilities and my small brain. Basically, even with the Duemilanova based on the ATMEGA328, you really can’t load a string array with more than a couple of hundred characters before the Arduino locks up. Unfortunately, you need to look through at least the first 1,500 – 2,000 characters to get the “from” and “subject” info I wanted. I looking into using PROGMEM, but I just couldn’t get my head around it (looks like all that fancy “pointer” stuff I can never figure out!). Then there’s the Arduiniana Flash library, but it seems limited to strings you load at the beginning, rather than dynamic strings.

Finally, I just decided to go with a pre-processor written in PHP. I already know enough PHP to be functional and it is excellent for text processing. When I went to figure out how to do sockets programming with PHP, the first tutorial I found was on writing a script to access a POP3 email server (check it out)! Using a pre-processor isn’t cheating too much. Tom Igoe uses one in Making Things Talk for his “Networked Air Quality Meter” project. Of course, on a much vaster scale, that is essentially how the RIM Blackberry email system works – emails are routed through their preprocessor software which compresses and reroutes them them down to the smartphone.

video and links after the break

at the end you can find the link to the  first post. Here’s the second and third.

Happy notifications.

via [myOpenSourceProjects]