Suggestions for a new Mac

PenguinMaster · May 26, 2020

I am going to be running a Christmas Lightshow to music and I had an idea to make it into a text messaging service. I will have a sign set up so anyone who is at the show can send a text message to the phone number (I have an iPhone SE that I'll be using), and it will send a text back with a list of songs to chose from. The Mac will have iMessage set up on it. I will be making a program that will listen for when the specific "song text" is sent back from the user to the Mac, the software will then play that song. I don't really think much processing power would be needed for something like this, but I'm not really sure. I was thinking something like a Mac mini or a Mac Pro? My budget would be around $200-$300 max. I would greatly appreciate your suggestions.

Or if you've had experience doing something similar on the windows side using some sort of texting service, I would be open to that too.

ShadySocks · May 26, 2020

I would use twillo's api, then your normal computer to handle this.

PenguinMaster · May 26, 2020

49 minutes ago, ShadySocks said:

I would use twillo's api, then your normal computer to handle this.

I see that their service is about $15/mo, I'm also unfamiliar with how I would make this work. I think I would be better off using AppleScript and just having a phone plan for a month. But I will look into it.

ShadySocks · May 30, 2020

On 5/26/2020 at 4:23 PM, Chickenfans said:

I see that their service is about $15/mo, I'm also unfamiliar with how I would make this work. I think I would be better off using AppleScript and just having a phone plan for a month. But I will look into it.

On 5/26/2020 at 3:04 PM, Chickenfans said:

My budget would be around $200-$300 max.

I recommend using python+twillo to handle this, as twillo seems to have pretty good documentation with examples in python.

https://www.twilio.com/docs/usage/api

PenguinMaster · May 31, 2020

On 5/30/2020 at 5:28 PM, ShadySocks said:

I recommend using python+twillo to handle this, as twillo seems to have pretty good documentation with examples in python.

https://www.twilio.com/docs/usage/api

Ok, will definitely look into this!