I’m a huge fan of the o2sms, a command line application for sending free SMS messages using the websites of three of Irelands most popular mobile operators being o2, Vodafone and Meteor. All of these operators offer the functionality of sending free text messages from their own websites giving users the option to send up to 300 free SMS messages per month, which is quite a lot considering they charge up to €0.11 per message when you use your phone.

The only problem I find with using these sites is that it takes quite a lot of steps to actually send a message. Open Firefox, load the website, login, navigate to the webtext page etc… This is where o2sms steps into the equation. It acts like a specialised browser that automates the actions taken by the user to send SMS messages and provides the functionality through a CLI (command line interface), reducing the process to a single terminal command. Read the rest of this post…

After my experience in last years Young Scientist Exhibition I decided that I would definitely try and enter again this year. After a lot of thought I decided upon my project entitled ‘Energy Saving through Automation’. In a nutshell I created an automation system for controlling household appliances and domestic lighting to combat standby power wasting.

Fortunately my project won two prizes, being 1st in Intermediate Technology Individual and the Science Foundation of Ireland special award which is given for research/engineering in the field of energy conservation technology.

The electronics part of the project was created using the Arduino micro-controller platform. For those that don’t know what the Arduino is, its a prototyping electronics platform created for hobbyists, by hobbyists. The Arduino provided the perfect platform on which to start working with electronics. The board itself runs its own variant of C/C++ and the support forums and language reference are to say the least, second to none.

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