[Wear-Hard] Getting data out of a pager? Serial or otherwise

[Vitorio Miliano]

I'm having a real hard time coming up with current information on
extracting data from a pager. Help me, O-Wear-Hard Kenobi, you're my
only hope.

I would like to, essentially, embed a beeper in another body-worn
device.  Numeric paging is fine.  I expect to have a microcontroller
taking data from the pager (RS232, TTL or otherwise) and then
performing other actions (LEDs, muscle wire, whatever) based on that
data.

I've seen traditional pager data receivers, for LED signs and such,
and they tend to be huge.  I really need the portability, small size
and battery-powered operation of a regular body-worn beeper.

Are there low-power, small, pager data receiver boards?  URLs and
prices, and whom I'd get service from?  I've already talked with
Ambient Devices regarding their Orb and their datacasting kit, and
they're close, but the Orb isn't low power and their devkit can't
receive arbitrary data.

Alternately, is there information out there on getting the data out of
a normal beeper?  I'd rather not have to reverse-engineer an LCD
display or something.  I'd be picking up a pager of whatever model is
most convenient and/or well-documented from some local pager store
along with service.

Anyone worked with pagers before?

Thanks,
Vitorio Miliano