Ricky Robinett, a nostalgic 90s kid, wanted to recreate his old pager using Arduino and Twilio. He assembled the hardware, displaying a "hello world" message on an LCD screen, and then built a Node.js app that received text messages from Twilio, which were displayed on the LCD screen. The code was written in C++ for the Arduino and JavaScript for the Node.js app, with the serial port connection used to pass data between the two. Once the serial connection was established, the app could receive and display incoming messages, with additional features such as scrolling text and color-changing displays. The project showcased the possibilities of combining hardware and software technologies like Twilio with Arduino and Node.js.