Telephony project

[Roger]

I'm new to Python and need to do a (low level, I think) telephony
project ( POTS, all local calling) in WinXp.
1. Fetch phone number from my ASCII data.
2. Dial (always a local number) phone (through USRobotics 56K? ).
3. Ask @3 questions to called phone number. Y/N Y/N Y/N
4. Save answers to ASCII file.
5. Say 'Thanks', hang up.
Repeat till eof()
And...I've not seen any telephony books in/for Python. Any and all
help, suggestions, directions, etc. would be *GREATLY* appreciated.

TIA

 

[Paul Rubin]

1. Fetch phone number from my ASCII data.
2. Dial (always a local number) phone (through USRobotics 56K? ).
3. Ask @3 questions to called phone number. Y/N Y/N Y/N
4. Save answers to ASCII file.
5. Say 'Thanks', hang up.
Repeat till eof()

There is an excellent graphic on the web showing how to do this phone
spamming with Python. It used to be at http://goatse.cx but I don't
know where it is now.

 

[Roger]

"CheckOn" is the working name for my project. Our church
community has many elderly who are at home but close to assisted living
placements. Many do not have family and rely on volunteer caretakers
and lunch providers for their socialization. We are trying to make
phone contact with these members to check on their needs, wellbeing,
and ability to take care of themselves. In sharing that information
with other denominations in our city, we discovered that others were
having identical issues. The numbers are larger than we anticipated.
Thus the project. Thanks for your interest.

 

[Mike]

I was able to do something like this in Python a while back. You'll need one
of:
(a) A telephone line dialer/monitor & DTMF I/O board that works through the
serial port, and a phone audio tap that mixes the soundcard I/O to the phone
(b) A TAPI-compliant modem that does everything you need
(c) A digital POTS phone that is controllable through serial, USB or your
LAN, or a TAPI interface.
(d) VOIP software and service than uses SIP, etc. (I found this I found
this:
http://softphones.globaliptel.com/(...aspx?content=4214134c0c4f416982e844bcd86b2955,
but am in no way endorsing it. Also check out http://www.sipfoundry.org/)

I used method (a) -- (b) tends to be a pain (as most OEM TAPI modems have
some fatal flaw or three...) and (c/d) may be more possible now that before.
I used voice reco on the input side rather then DTMF, but I was doing it
from local phone exensions on the same loop, not for outside calls, and not
for the elderly, so DTMF is probably better anyway. (If you need to know the
exact hardware I used, I can find out.)

The other option is to not have your own hardware at all and use a
service -- there are companies provide web services that let you
write/generate markup (VoiceXML or other) to make the calls, wait for DTMF
or voice input, etc. (Though I had trouble Googling one at the moment -
there were more a few years ago...)

m

 

[aaron]

It will be much easier to use asterisk, there's a win32 version aterisk
available but it does not support hardware phone, voip only.
A clone FXO card only cost $15 on ebay.

 

[Miki Tebeka]

Hello Roger,

1. Fetch phone number from my ASCII data.

Trivial in Python.

2. Dial (always a local number) phone (through USRobotics 56K? ). Can't recall that.
3. Ask @3 questions to called phone number. Y/N Y/N Y/N

You can use flite (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/) for Text-To-Speech.
(e.g. system("flite -t 'how are you?'"))

4. Save answers to ASCII file.

You need to get the audio, maybe you can use portaudio
(http://www.portaudio.com/)

5. Say 'Thanks', hang up.

flit again.

Repeat till eof()

Trivial.

HTH.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miki Tebeka <[email protected]>
http://tebeka.bizhat.com
The only difference between children and adults is the price of the toys

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[Roger]

Thanks for all the helpful postings! A clearer specification for
my project is that the CALLER speaks directly to list_member. And
enters, thru GUI checkbox(s), answering: r_u_ok?; Send chuch member to
visit list_member; call Social Worker, help needed, etc. An important
element is to verify that the elderly member has been called. When,
and by whom. And if additional care, contact is needed.
After reading replys I think I can do all Python work. I'm
looking at pySerial to manage the phone calls. The s/w needs to be
GUI, ez to use (elderly volunteers) and work on donated (read 'old')
hardware. Thank you all for your advice, pointers, and suggestions. rm