How cool is GSM technology? Way cool, we reckon. The ability to open your gate with a (free!) missed call from your mobile phone – from anywhere in the world no less! – is something straight out of science fiction. And this is but one of a myriad of possible functions that you could use one of our GSM devices for. The future is here, ladies and gentlemen.

And we’d like to make sure you get the most out of this wonderful, space-age technology. To this end, we’ve documented in this communication two easily overlooked yet mandatory setup procedures that you need to ensure you’ve covered in order to get your GSM product up and running quickly and conveniently.

1.    CLIP must be enabled on each phone

CLIP, or Caller Line Identification Presentation, is basically what allows the device being called to “see” or “recognise” the number calling it during the ringing signal, or when the call is being set up before the call is answered.

On any GSM device, you need to ensure that CLIP is enabled on all mobile phones learned into its memory. An easy way to check is to ring any number from your phonebook and, if it comes up as “unknown” or “private number” on the other party’s phone, your CLIP is not enabled and your GSM module will not react to it. It makes perfect sense when you get right down to it. After all, you wouldn’t open the door for someone if you didn’t know who was on the other side of it!

But what you may not know is that, on contract SIM cards, you also need to enable CLIP on the SIM card going into the GSM module. This you’ll have to do by first inserting the SIM card into a phone and enabling CLIP before inserting it into the GSM module.

2.    Airtime must be loaded on the GSM device SIM card

In order for a GSM device to communicate with an online portal such as G-WEB, from which units are administered, it needs to at least have a little bit of airtime loaded onto the SIM card since synchronisation is a data transaction. It is important that the unit is topped up with actual airtime, not SMS or data bundles, since the latter two usually expire within a month of being loaded.

CENTSYS manufactures the infinitely useful G-SWITCH-22 GSM device, and the advanced MyGSM range.