Overcoming Text Message Length Limitations

Most home status data like temperature and power status can be easily communicated within the approximately 160 characters alotted by most carriers. But, this limit might include other data, as Verizon says, leaving less for actual status data:

What is included in the 160-character limit of a text message?
The 160 character limit includes the sender's email address (if applicable), the composed message and, if provided, the subject and callback number.

But, that means no detailed video or pictures can be transferred, which might be interesting information about the home. Same for databases of home temperature history. And, although lots of temperature and I/O digital information, like house power status, can be packed into one message, it might not be easily readable by the recipient. For instance compression techniques might allow a great deal of data, but the result would require a program at the receiving end to make sense of it.

One way around this is to use a program at the remote end to do the data transfer, providing a friendlier user interface. A smart phone app could be written to do this, but I don't have one at this time to experiment with. A computer application program that sent and received text messages could also provide a good user interface. It would communicate with the monitor via compressed text messages (using email, for instance) but with the user using an interactive GUI.

Another way around this is to query the database of home data remotely using commands like 'Minmaxo 5' to report the minimum and maximum outside temperatures over the last 5 days. I currently have this command, and several more, implemented and they work quite well. Here is an example response to a query sent via email:

in temps last 5 days: low in temp 71 F on Wed Jun  8, 5 AM. high in temp 80 F on Thu Jun  9, 5 PM. Current: 76

  -----Original Message-----
  From: user@zouck.net
  Sent: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 20:41:46 -0400
  To: 443XXXYYYY@txt.att.net
 Subject: Minmaxi 5

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