[mythtv] Caller ID

[Shawn Rutledge]

I implemented caller ID using UDP packets in XML format.  (The XML is
small enough to fit in one packet, so there's no need for a
higher-level protocol.)  The assumption is that your modem is probably
on a different machine than your client(s), and there can be many
clients scattered around the house so you can see who's calling no
matter what you are doing.

http://ecloud.org:8080/~ecloud/caller-id/

I agree that MythTV needs to have a means to put up arbitrary OSD's,
just like XawTV can do with that separate "remote control" program.  It
would then be extremely easy to integrate my caller ID solution without
having to add this feature directly to Myth; and it would be more
flexible for other things besides caller ID (email-from-your-sweetheart
notification? doorbell notification?  lmsensors out-of-range?  motion
detector?  burglar alarm?  weather alerts? stock-market events?  the
possibilities are endless)  I also envisioned the same kind of XML
packets being used for other types of notifications besides just caller
ID.

It would also be trivial to implement a daemon which listens directly
to a modem for caller-ID info and sends out the broadcasts, rather than
requiring mgetty.  I might get around to that if somebody else doesn't,
because I don't like the delay that mgetty is introducing, and have
extra modems lying around anyway.  And I ought to get some Debian
packages built.

Of course somebody ought to write broadcast-sender-daemons for ISDN and
maybe SIP.  Maybe for various IM standards too, so you can be notified
if your close friends want to talk to you.  The important thing is to
keep it modular.  Conforming to a common XML structure is all that is
required for all these types of notifications to interoperate.

If you have problems with any aspects of what I've done, please let's
work together and solve them.  I think it's more productive than
re-inventing the wheel again.  (There are maybe 3 or so other
incompatible solutions out there, with limitations that I didn't like)

--- Ken Bass <kbass at kenbass.com> wrote:
> I want to add support for Caller ID. I'm new to the code
> and it will take some time to find my way around. Any pointers
> on where to look at?
> 
> Goal:
> When the phone rings and a caller id modem produces the Callers Name
> / 
> Number I want it
> to show on the screen (I assume that is called the OSD).
> 
> I'm thinking
> a) Do I need to modify the 'themes' to allow a theme to specify where
> on 
> the screen to
> put several fields (e.g.; Caller Name, Caller Phone Number, Icon
> [such as 
> telephone])?
> b) Do I modify the OSD portion of libmythtv to tie this in?
> c) I want the myth portion to be listening to a 'caller id' socket.
> There 
> will be a defined
> API structure for communicating over the UDP? socket. A caller id
> backend 
> task will
> handle interfacing with a caller id capable modem and producing the
> UDP 
> packet.
> That client can run local or on another machine for those who want to
> run 
> distributed.
> 
> Any ideas/suggestions/pointers?
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> 


=====
. _______  Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud at bigfoot.com
 (_  | |_)    http://ecloud.org/  kb7pwd at kb7pwd.ampr.org
 __) | | \______________________________________________

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