KDev intros cameraphone-friendly FoxBox MMS

If the original Linux-based FoxBox SMS didn't boast quite the capabilities you were looking for, then perhaps KDev's upgraded FoxBox MMS will be more to your liking. Like the original FoxBox, it'll act as a cellphone-to-web gateway, in this case accepting photos sent from a cameraphone via MMS and putting 'em straight up onto the web (it'll even able to do conversion to JPG, GIF, or PNG in the process). As before, it'll also give you FTP and HTTP interfaces to manage all that uploaded content, which can either be stored on an SD card or on up to two attached USB drives. According to LinuxDevices.com, KDev's David Cantaluppi says that makes the box ideal for websites looking to do photo contests and the like, although it's appeal to the general public would seem to be quite limited, especially considering its $1,240 price tag.

[Joseph @ Sep 27th 2007 6:52PM]

no comments after a couple of hours?
This must suck!

[engadget @ Sep 27th 2007 8:03PM]

Look at the price!

Who would spend $1200 to take crappy cell pics and auto upload them to a website.

You could probably do the same thing with an old Linux box and a decently written script.

[saintchuck @ Sep 28th 2007 1:35AM]

I initially read it as 'KFed intros cameraphone' and just skipped it.

[Matt @ Sep 27th 2007 7:48PM]

Wow, an overly complicated and over priced piece of hardware that could be replaced with a small php file and cron.... I set up something that syndicated cell phone pictures on both livejournal and my wordpress and it took me max of 10 minutes.

[ethana2 @ Sep 27th 2007 7:56PM]

Alas, the average idiot thinks 'I need another device' before they think 'Software could do that so easily.

Then companies sell them overpriced hardware... with the right software running on it. So sad. They may just be the same people who buy phones, game consoles, DVD players, XM/Sirius subscriptions...

PC's can do everything, as long as you have the right software and peripherals. You know, maybe people don't trust them because of windows. What has Microsoft done to our society? Using the instability of their OS to sell XBOXes?

[Russ @ Sep 28th 2007 12:29AM]

small PHP + cron? how are you getting the MMS images? scraping them down from a web location somewhere?

[James Eberhardt @ Sep 28th 2007 12:13AM]

I'm quite excited about this product. As someone who has just setup a box to do this, it would have saved me a lot of time if I had a device that I could just turn on and configure to get going. Sure, there are do-it-yourself methods of doing this, but for people in the business world, to spend some money on hardware means saving money on time. How many hours would it take to setup and configure a Linux box with Kannel and Mbuni, plus the web interface to the software? I'd like to see someone read SMS and MMS messages from a SIM card using nothing but a simple PHP script. Not to mention that you need a cellular modem that accepts a SIM card.

@Matt - I'd really like to see a link to your solution that took you no longer than 10 minutes. Last time I checked, it takes about 10 minutes just to download, install and configure Apache. Was your solution perhaps using an online service that you were able to post your cell phone pictures to?

If you think this is overpriced, then please produce a pre-configured product to sell to people that does that same thing.

I think that this is a product that is the first to market at a time when a lot of people are looking for this functionality. Personally, I am seriously considering purchasing one.

[Russ @ Sep 28th 2007 12:33AM]

agreed - this is pretty cool. yes, probably of limited appeal. a friend of mine coded a dating site where we wanted to allow people to update their profile pics via a cameraphone. at the time it was easiest to tell users to send their pictures to a unique email address (how flickr does it). would've been much nice to just give them a phone number..

[matt @ Sep 28th 2007 12:48AM]

I set the contact I am sending it to as an email address, then had it pulled through pop and posted to my wordpress, modified wordpress to send to livejournal on new post.

[matt @ Sep 28th 2007 12:44AM]

I actually just set the contact to my email address, so the cron/php pulled from my pop3.

[James Eberhardt @ Sep 28th 2007 1:49AM]

@Matt - yes, it is possible to extract attachments from emails. However, if that is all you were doing, then you wouldn't need FoxBox MMS. Your solution doesn't take into all the cross-carrier issues with sending SMS and MMS messages, doesn't allow for sending messages back to the sender's phone (as an SMS or MMS), doesn't take into account that not everyone's phone is enabled to send picture messages to email accounts, and is really a solution geared for one single user to hack around. I'd be willing to bet that images supplied by your carrier also ended up on the blog. Your comments also imply that FoxBox is only good for uploading images to a blog. It has far more potential than that.

The FoxBox is clearly not targeted towards individuals who want to post cell phone images to their blog. This product is targeted towards application developers who are somewhere in the middle of individual hackers and enterprise applications. It's targeted towards people who want to get a small-medium application up and running for the general consumption of the public users. It's meant to get you beyond the prototype stage of your application.

In any case, I'm all in favour of hacking together many different approaches to get stuff to work. Just don't discredit this product by trying to imply that your 10 minute solution would fit everyone's needs.

[Maxmilian @ Oct 2nd 2007 9:26AM]

The FoxMmsTask is an optimal product with low cost, thanks to the power and the reliability of linux. Fantastic software and fantastic hardware!Thank you Davide for your product!

[Davide Cantaluppi @ May 23rd 2008 10:42AM]

Easy Guardian, Italy-based KDev has found another use for its tiny, cellular radio-equipped Linux box. In its newest "Easy Guardian" iteration, the Acme FoxBox works as a network monitor that uses ICMP pings, SNMP scans, and text messaging to alert users to network events. More info: http://www.easyguardian.com

[brahim.135 @ Jul 6th 2009 3:31PM]

hi