What kind of hw/sw do i need to automate a phoneservice?

Roger Alsing 0

Just got a request to make an app that autmagicly calls one of those phone services ("press 1 if you want to wait a bit longer, press 2 if ...") Is it possible to do this with a normal voice modem? I mean start sending dtmf codes after something has picked up the phone in the other end? also, w/o trying to make too much of a programming question out of this. Would I need TAPI to do this? //Roger

Michael P Butler

Roger J wrote: Just got a request to make an app that autmagicly calls one of those phone services ("press 1 if you want to wait a bit longer, press 2 if ...") Is it possible to do this with a normal voice modem? I mean start sending dtmf codes after something has picked up the phone in the other end? also, w/o trying to make too much of a programming question out of this. Would I need TAPI to do this? A lot depends on the modem and how well it supports TAPI. I've never had much success with modems but I do more voice work than straight DTMF. Best thing to do is to the TapiBrowser supplied with the Platform SDK which you can quickly test your modem to see if it works. Then you can think about writing the actual code. If you can afford it, then a telephony board such as a Dialogic or similiar would probably save a lot of heartache if your modem isn't up-to the job. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]

Ray Cassick

Michael P Butler wrote: If you can afford it, then a telephony board such as a Dialogic Hey, it's MY jopb to push these :) I work for them after all :) Do you use them?

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
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Michael P Butler

Ray Cassick wrote: Hey, it's MY jopb to push these I work for them after all Do you use them? I haven't used one for a couple of years. I have a mini-PBX that I do most of my TAPI work against now. I'm looking at buying a board sometime in the near future. I want to get a desktop CTI app working on my production machine but my PBX is ISDN and I've now moved to ADSL and so can't connect the PBX to the outside world anymore. What's the best/cheapest two port analogue card at the moment? Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]

KaRl

Ray Cassick wrote: I work for them after all Do you? Then I should introduce you a colleague who is fighting with a DISI32 and who is blessing Dialogic right now :-D

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Ray Cassick

Modems are for data, voice boards are for telephony. Although modems will do the voice thing don't count on them to be well supported for voice type applications. What you are going to find is that you MIGHT be able to get you app working with one model and if you try to deploy it on another things will not work right (or at all) depending on what functionality you try to use. So, IMHO (and I have 9 years in telephony development) do not use modems for things like this. Now, that being said, there are a lot of vendors out there that offer voice boards that will do what you need. Various vendors at all different price points and all different feature sets. I would be amiss if I did not recommend the boards made by the company that I work for (Intel/Dialogic). That's all I will say about the products since I don't want to be accused of using this forum to push a specific vendor. If you want to contact me outside the message board I will gladly respond. Feel free to contact me @ work at rayDOTcassickATintelDOTcom. Now, to Tapi or not to Tapi. I have spent a lot of time over the years dealing with both Tapi based and non-Tapi based apps and personally I don't like Tapi. It was a great idea, but in the long run I have never seen a case where it was implemented correctly. It was supposed to be an interface standard that would make an application hardware agnostic but various vendors (Intel included here) have taken things to the outsides of the standard. I have not seen two vendors implement the standard interface the same way. Underlying differences in how various vendors have implemented the TSP libraries that sit between Tapi and the hardware have almost made it impossible to have an app that runs between different hardware vendors without some level of tweaking. Personally I suggest that you take care of the issue one of two ways: 1) Settle on using hardware from one vendor and stick with using the Native API provided by that vendors hardware. You will get much better control over the card doing this. 2) If you don't want to settle using one vendors HW then build your own abstraction layer. Build your app at a higher level and develop a standard interface to talk to a hardware layer that you can build using the vendor specific APIs. This adds some work but in the long run helps out tremendously if you want to support multiple HW vendors.

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physici

Ray Cassick

The lowest density board we have is a 4 port (D41JCTLS) card. I have seen them as low as $799. They are not really the cheapest HW around but they are IMHO good quality. My work is centered around engineering support for the digital PBX specialty products: D82JCTU D42JCTU DL3000 DSLT PIMG CT Connect

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
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Ray Cassick

I have to admit that I have never toutched a DISI board. I deal with all the digital PBX specialty stuff so that card is a bit out side my realm.

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
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KaRl

Ray Cassick wrote: I have never toutched a DISI board If I understand well my colleague's blessing, I would say you're a lucky guy :-D Ray Cassick wrote: I deal with all the digital PBX specialty stuff Hehe, we might then be competitors... :)

Fold With Us! Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck, doch Seh' ich dann nach unten weg Da schlägt es links!

Navin

You will need some mechanical engineering skills to pull this off, but it could certainly work. :bob: Bolt a phone to the computer. :bob: Create a robot arm capabile of picking up the phone, pressing buttons, and hanging it up. :bob: Connect this phone to the computer (USB would work), and also physically bolt it such that the location of the phone relative to the arm is always known. :bob: Write the driver for the robot arm, and you're all set. :-D The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

El Corazon

Navin wrote: Bolt a phone to the computer. Create a robot arm capabile of picking up the phone, pressing buttons, and hanging it up. Connect this phone to the computer (USB would work), and also physically bolt it such that the location of the phone relative to the arm is always known. Write the driver for the robot arm, and you're all set. USB, robot arm, driver, piece of cake... What is a "bolt"? ;P _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Ray Cassick

Typical Rube Goldberg action... http://www.sharbean.ca/blog_images/2004-01-31_1958[^]

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
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Anders Molin

Dialogic, now there is something I havent worked with for a couple of years. Mmmm, fond memories. I implemented a complete IVR Server which accepted COM plugins to control the actual flow of the application. I actually miss working with TAPI and the dialogic API's, it was great fun :-D - Anders Bill's Bar

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Ray Cassick

Anders Molin wrote: I actually miss working with TAPI and the dialogic API's, it was great fun I agree... telephony can ge a good time... Even more sop now that VoIP is becomming more popular. We have all kinds of great new things happening on that front...

George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
My Blog[^]

Anders Molin

I have never worked with VoIP, but I have made TAPI wrapper for a LOT of different PBX'es, and had quite some fun with the Dialogic API... :) - Anders Bill's Bar

WDevs - The worlds first DSP, free blog space, email and more. Now also with forums :)

nutsnbolts

Jeffry J. Brickley wrote: What is a "bolt"? :laugh:Danger don't get me started....see user handle.:laugh: A bolt is a fastening device, generally made of a material with a tensile strength appropriate to the application…… Jim

El Corazon

nutsnbolts wrote: A bolt is a fastening device, generally made of a material with a tensile strength appropriate to the application…… ahhh, I think I have seen those before... ;) that's hardware, I'm software. ;P _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Ali Mojtabaee

Yes! It’s possible! you can do it using TAPI and a voice modem : 1- for making a new call you can use lineMakeCall 2- For checking that your destination picked up the phone you can use lineGetCallStatus and check dwCallStateMode or you can check TAPI LINE_CALLSTATE messages. 3- And for generating some digits on your call you can use lineGenerateDigits As you know before using these functions you must initialize the line. it's easy! isn't it? :)