>I found myself missing 1990s pagers.

I still use one which gets one-way service from <https://pagersdirect.net/> (~$14/mo, with phone number and pager included). Most US cities, large and small, still have active infrastructure. I live in a city with a few hundred thousand people, great coverage.

This has replaced my mobile phone, which I no longer carry. It also prevents spammers from messaging... because the systems don't understand this antiquated technology [1].

For those interested, Pagers Direct has an email-to-pager option (I don't use it, phone digits only please caller, after the beep). It also has two-way pagers, which I have no experience with.

One caution: for one-way pagers, if you're out of range[0] when somebody sends you text, you will never get the message (no handshake/confirmation).

[0] does not use traditional cellular infrastructure

[1] TBH: most humans don't either, unless you explain how to page somebody: key in your callback#/code after the beep [no audio/text]

[•] I don't work for the above-linked paging service, I'm just a very happy customer.

As someone who builds and operating a very large simulcast paging network for emergency services I can assure you POCSAG is not completely legacy ;-) very much alive and well in 2025.

Definitely old but highly reliable.

Woah! The world really works in mysterious ways. I've found myself thinking in this space a lot recently. I've been working on a pager that takes the notifications from my phone and relays only the ones I want to see. I use LTE-M/NB-IOT to get connectivity anywhere and the device works and I'm looking to find a way to get a pcd/case made..

Landing page (doesn't link to anything): https://fob.launchbowl.com/

A little word dump of thoughts at the start of the journey: https://launchbowl.com/e_ink_pager

Your project seems really cool and allows you to bring your own hardware. Out of curiosity, have you blocked all notifications on your phone? Would this be run on your computer? Would you ever move in the direction of a physical device?

Really neat project, see my sister comment (on analogue pagers still in service).

>I'd love to hear your thoughts on the IP-to-Phone-Number mapping logic (it's purely visual, but I'm really into it).

Personally, this seems like a really bad idea. The similarity to actual phone numbers might lead to confusion by non-technical high-trust contactors. Worse (e.g.) if the IP were 91.1x.x.x then this could lead to further confusion &/or erroneous 9-1-1 misdials (by inept contactors).

It's a UDP packet, ought it not be in IP-format?

>where you only want interruptions from a high-trust circle

I don't even have a phone contact number anymore. After you page me, I'll VoIP you back from an outbound-only.

But overall I LOVE that you have attempted this; only real problem for your average installer/recipient is that most home ISPs are firewalled (so a UDP7777 inbound isn't possible), but this obviously isn't for even your average technical installer.

----

Just leave me alone, world/SPAMmers!

How do you prevent malicious actors from invading your 7777UDPs?

finger is better (and best is reticulum)

or https://shop.exploitee.rs/shop/p/the-hacker-pager

Do you have this running on some kind of pager shaped device? What do you use it for?

I will send my thoughts but at which number?

Really cool. I like the flashing red.

What is "UDP-7777"? Is it some kind of software? What does it do exactly?

Is the source available? What is presented is a machine-generated website with very little meaningful information and mystery binaries for three platforms.

PS: The "SHA256 CHECKSUMS VERIFIED." is static. No hash check is performed, and as far as I can see the website doesn't have a list of hashes to check.