Wireless e-mail message count display

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Exhibition
1

Although I built this for another purpose, I essentially created a way to display the number of e-mail messages on an LCD screen with a wireless connection. It uses a ChLCD (Kent Display) and an XBee connection. I wrote up the entire description here: http://rustynailworkshop.com/Projects/Entries/2010/8/21_E-ink_Sign_(or_Wireless_E-mail_Count_Display).html

Here's a sample image:

Yes, I know the number on the display is not realistic, it was taken during a test. Many thanks to those on this forum that helped me answer questions during the development.

2

It would be much more interesting if the device was indipendent of a PC: can the ethernet shield be used to connect to mail server using telnet to send STAT command?

3

Very cool project alligator.

Jumpjack - yes. I've been looking in the last couple of days.

As an example of how straightforward it is to access the number of mails in your inbox, here's how to do it via telnet:

If you're on a windows machine, open the comman prompt.
Ping your mailserver ping mail.yourserver.com
Note your mailserver's IP. This isn't needed for telnet but it's easier to use the IP on the arduino.

Open telnet (type 'telnet' and press enter).
open 192.168.1.2 110 (substitute the IP for your mailserver's IP but the port should still be 110)
user youremail@yourserver.com (change to your username)
pass SecretPassword (change to your password)

stat

You should get a message back that looks a bit like +OK 1 1300 where the first integer is the number of mails and the second is their total size.

Should be really easy to get the arduino to repeat that and grab the number of mails.