Well it has been a busy month with a lot of project developments and Stage 1 complete.  The initial design (as available in GitHub) has been significantly improved - practically re-designed.  The current design will make provision for Zigbee, WiFi and Bluetooth for future/other projects and the mainstream project (the focus here) will be based on an Electric IMP.  This makes solves the problem of WiFi connectivity because the Electric IMP can be configured to connect to your WiFi via Blinkup, i.e. by using your mobile phone display and flashing the settings to the Electric IMP.

The prototype is just about complete with the first SMS notification successfully transmitted to my mobile phone via a RN-XV WiFi module.  (Electric IMP is still in progress).  The keypad is also connected and the software to read it is done.  The software has also been layered making it easy to re-use in other projects.  (I plan to clean up the software a little more before making it available on GitHub.)

The goal for the coming month and Stage 2 is to get the unit working through the Electric IMP and figure our a way to get the order numbers/tracking numbers of packages onto the unit easily.  (May also have to add non-volatile storage for this - note quite sure yet.)  This can either be done by sending an SMS to the unit or entering the order numbers/tracking numbers on a website and the Electric IMP reading it from the site.  It will be an interesting month learning the Squirrel language (for the Electric IMP), possibly PHP for the server-end and getting the display going as well as finalizing the hardware design...  I'm excited!!!