dje@uswest.com (Douglas Ertz #350 x2589) (09/23/89)
I am looking for a device that will
1) answer a phone call (either by detecting ringing or via
an RS-232 connection that can be used to send commands to the
device telling it to go off-hook)
2) play a continguous message
3) go on-hook when it detects that the caller hangsup the phone
or a command is sent to it, via the RS-232 mentioned earlier,
telling it to go on-hook.
The message being played back is a tone, so some type of box that
genarates tones instead of playing back a message would also do.
The key words here are continguous playback and detects hangup. I
have talked to a number of manufactures and none seem to provide these
features.
P.S. This will be used on a tip and ring circuit.
Doug Ertz
dje@uswest.com
(303) 930-2589jst@cca.ucsf.edu (Joe Stong) (09/24/89)
The Computerfone(TM) from Suncoast Systems, Inc. Pennsacola FL will report ringing, sieze a line, dial, listen to touchtones, and play and record segments of sound on a phone line. You can also queue up the sound segments, and upload/download them. I think the selling price is around 00. It has a rom with some prerecorded letters and numbers (sounds) in it. It doesn't do any waveform compression like the PC Answering machine boards with the DSP's or CPU's do. Warning: even at 38,400 Baud, you can't keep up with sampling at its highest data rate (8K 4 bit (delta?) samples/sec), and the protocol seems to have no error checking. It can barely keep up at 6K with binary transfers. Unix tty drivers usually have trouble with high baud rates... I currently can't figure out how to keep the thing offhook after a successful dial, but I haven't been spending much time with it. What I really want is a box like this that works with a bidirectional parallel port, or a SCSI interface; or ethernet/tcpip/telnet so it can transfer data fast enough. Anyone got any ideas?