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OhmSMS

Challenges Entered: 
A mobile device that sends an SMS to a person letting them know their power is on or off.

It works by logging when a phone’s charge is interrupted. So you purchase a cheap phone, give it a sim with a few shillings credit and then plug it into an outlet at your home or office. When the power goes out, or when it comes back (if you're away) it sends a message telling you exactly when the power has come on or gone off.  OhmSMS offers trending as well, so the user can see relations between outages.  Ex. if Wedensdays are particulary bad, you know not to buy a whole lot of perishables on Tuesday. In addition: A lot, I've worked with mobiles on a number of projects like Questionbox.org, Grameen, and my own company.

Project Details
Project url: 
http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/1815
Project video: 
Supporting organization: 
Appfrica Labs
Project Assessment
Financial support: 
Project has financial support
Sustainability Model: 
We will sell handsets with the software installed at a slight markup.  The software is essentially free, customers pay for installation and set-up.  If we purcahse a large number of low-end mobiles, I'm guessing we can purchase them for around 15 dollars each and sell at 30.  Several NGOs have discussed buying the phones in bulk, to give or microfinance to the SME and disenfranchised poor that they work with. In addition: Yes
Expertise needed: 
Acquiring a valid Operator Manufacturer Domain Certificate to sign our midlet
Project goals: 
Software is complete, now we need to deploy it and perhaps find an larger operator to embed it on all their devices.
Identified Obstacles: 
Mobile operator resistance.  We really need the mo license to make access to the baselevel features of the phone both more secure and easier to scale.

Location

Kampala
Uganda
Submitted by j.gosier on May 16, 2009 - 7:47am

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