Getting a notification when my system freezes...

Question

I have a minor problem where my (new) computer tends to completely freeze up. Am not sure when it happens exactly but the 6 times that it did happen during the last 4 weeks, it could have been related to a very long rendering task that eats up lots of RAM. (Am actually pretty sure that this rendering engine is causing this problem.) Anyway, I don't really care about what causes the problem. I can repeat it by having the same image rendered again and waiting about 4 hours for it to finish. And I can avoid it by making a minor adjustment to the rendered image which somehow seems to solve it all. It's likely a bug in the rendering engine. And when I say Freeze, I mean that everything stops responding. Keyboard, mouse, disks, they all just stop and the image on my screens are frozen. I don't get a BSOD or automated reboot.

I don't mind the freeze-up, but I would like to receive a warning when the system does freeze up. So I was thinking about a simple solution that should warn me when it does freeze up again. To do so, I want to use an old SmartPhone (HP IPAQ) which runs Windows Mobile 6 and connect it to my computer through one of the USB ports. It would just continue to communicate with my computer to check if it's still alive. When the computer doesn't respond for 5 minutes, it will assume the system is frozen and would have to send a signal to me. Basically, I want it to send me an SMS message to my other phone. Well, consider the SmartPhone to be a kind of lifeguard...

Anyways, I am quite familiar with software development, just don't know where to start with this application. I will be using the .NET Compact Framework and need some pointers in the right direction to do the following: 1) How to connect to a service on another PC using the USB connection and not some wireless Internet connection? (And definitely NOT any Internet over GSM options, since it's just a prepaid card that I'm using for this phone.) 2) How to send an SMS message from this phone to my other phone? 3) Are there already some existing solutions similar to this thing I just came up with, which could save me some time programming?

Answer 1

1) You can connect to a USB port as a COM port - many examples on how to do this especially around using GPS. Write an app for your pc to listen to USB for a message and respond. Write the app on the phone to periodically send a message to the PC and get a response.

2) There should be an API for the phone to send an SMS.

3) Not that I know of, the closest being anything that communicates on USB such as I mentioned with GPS-enabled devices.

Good luck - I know (since I have worked with all the technologies you are talking about) that I wouldn't have a problem making this, but for those without that experience it could get tricky.

Answer 2

I used to have an iPaq pocket pc and based on what i remember when you hook them up to the pc they pick up an IP address.

That IP address is the key to your problem,

your computer could ping your pocket pc's ip as a heartbeat. that way you can be sure that you aren't going through GSM since the Desktop is calling the handheld. How to: Create a Socket Listener your socket listener would be listening on your pocket pc if it doesn't get any messages in a set period of time it would trigger the alert winch would send out your SMS.

You could also do the reverse, where your pocket pc would be pinging your desktop, just make sure that you are using the local IP to avoid traffic over GSM

Sending SMS using compact framework

Send SMS Sample