Patent ID: 8570189

Claim:
A device comprising: a housing; one or more external condition sensors; one or more display portions integral to the housing and effective to display alphanumeric messages; a cellular communications module residing within the housing and functionally linked to a cellular network; and a controller residing within the housing and operatively linked to the one or more sensors, the one or more display portions, and the communications module, the controller effective to generate a return data string based on external condition data sensed by the one or more sensors; transmit said return data string across the cellular network via the communications module; receive a display data string transmitted from across the cellular network via the communications module, the display data string further comprising an encoded alphanumeric message displayable by at least one of said one or more display portions; decode said encoded alphanumeric message; determine whether a message intended for display on one or more display portions has been received via the cellular network; depending on the determination whether a message intended for display has been received, to further determine at least one of said one or more display portions to either display the decoded message or one or more messages based on the external condition data; and route said decoded message or said one or more messages based on the external condition data to the at least one display portion.