How to Make Outgoing Calls (e.g. when intrusion is detected)

[Pete]

Wow! How I wish I could find one like that here.

You can purchase one used. At one time these were very popular. It is only a 3G modem.

I paid $25 USD for mine a couple of years back from Australia.

Here is one in Florida for $39.99 USD.

eBay item number: 183933214106

[Michael McSharry]

It seems the HS phone-related support is at an end. How about having HS speak with an Amazon Echo nearby, “Alexa call MyPhone”.

Ooma and OBI are modern telco interfaces, but I am not familiar with their API capabilities.

[pcburcham]

You can use Twilio to do this. Sign up for a free trial and grab a trial phone number. They give you plenty of credit to test the service. Then have a look at this thread for some inspiration: https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/te...nd-this-plugin

I use the C# script in there to do exactly what you are wanting to do and it works great for me. I like using Twilio because there are TONS of cool integrations to play around with. You also don't get locked in to a subscription or the like. You can fund it pay-as-you go if you want. I THINK the minimum amount to fund (when you have to) is $20 but I can't remember. Phone numbers are $1 per month and get deducted from your balance. Your trial will last for quite a while and after you fund it that $20 will go a looong way.

I also use it to send SMS to do two-factor authentication on my file servers, SIP for conferences, all kinds of crap like that. Just something for you to mull over.

[hkfanatic]

Since you would have to buy a Way2Call, and I didn't want you to waste your money if it didn't work, I fired up HS3 and tested it. Works fine!

Make sure you get a Way2Call USB Hi-Phone Desktop Pro. The "Lite" version doesn't support all the features. There's one available on Ebay, but it appears to be the older version [HD00USGR01 while newer versions are HD00USGR02]. I'm not sure what the differences may be.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Way2Call-Hi...4AAOSw~ppedXYT

I went hunting online and discovered that there are many versions of the Way2Call. Surprisingly, the HD00USGR01/02 product numbers refer to the Way2Call Hi-Phone Desktop USB. The Way2Call Hi-Phone Desktop Pro (which supposedly replaces the Desktop USB and PCI/PCIe models) have the HD00PRGR01 product number.

One thing I can say, these things are not cheap!

[hkfanatic]

Should be fine! Windows 10 has been a problem for me, even using the new W2C Win10 drivers. Some machines it works fine, others it won't work with HSphone at all, even though the W2C self-test software works fine. Very strange.

If you ever upgrade to HS4, HSphone will go away. In that case, you'd need to run HS2 by itself on an old PC. If you have a license for HS3, then Homeseer will give you authorization codes for HS2 at no charge. I'm in the final testing stages of a "how-to" on having HS2 HSphone talk to HS4 via JSON to do things like run HS4 events, display caller-ID info in HStouch, announce caller ID info, run HS4 events by issuing verbal commands via phone, etc. So if you do upgrade to HS4, you will still be able to do most of the things you want. I'm not sure yet about having HS4 trigger events on HS2, which is what you would need to do in order to have HS2 do an outbound call based on things that happen on HS4. Maybe I'll have that figured out by the time you decide to upgrade.

Sounds awesome. I will look forward to the end product.

Honestly, I read about the HSPhone not being present in HS4 and that was the reason I asked what is the best way to make an outgoing call because I might one day decide to upgrade to HS4 then what?

Thanks again.

[hkfanatic]

Wow! How I wish I could find one like that here.

You can purchase one used. At one time these were very popular. It is only a 3G modem.

I paid $25 USD for mine a couple of years back from Australia.

Here is one in Florida for $39.99 USD.

eBay item number: 183933214106

Awesome! I'll look into it. Thanks!

[hkfanatic]

It seems the HS phone-related support is at an end. How about having HS speak with an Amazon Echo nearby, “Alexa call MyPhone”.

Ooma and OBI are modern telco interfaces, but I am not familiar with their API capabilities.

Hmmm... might just work. Let me look into this. Thanks!

[hkfanatic]

You can use Twilio to do this. Sign up for a free trial and grab a trial phone number. They give you plenty of credit to test the service. Then have a look at this thread for some inspiration: https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/te...nd-this-plugin

I use the C# script in there to do exactly what you are wanting to do and it works great for me. I like using Twilio because there are TONS of cool integrations to play around with. You also don't get locked in to a subscription or the like. You can fund it pay-as-you go if you want. I THINK the minimum amount to fund (when you have to) is $20 but I can't remember. Phone numbers are $1 per month and get deducted from your balance. Your trial will last for quite a while and after you fund it that $20 will go a looong way.

I also use it to send SMS to do two-factor authentication on my file servers, SIP for conferences, all kinds of crap like that. Just something for you to mull over.

I will look into this as well. Thank you! I suppose you are just able to send SMS to your phone and not make phone calls, right?

[pcburcham]

I will look into this as well. Thank you! I suppose you are just able to send SMS to your phone and not make phone calls, right?

Can make phone calls as well. The script in the thread I linked does just that. You can pass HS3 variables to it as well. For example, I have mine configured to tell me which door/window has been breached when I receive the call. You see how that is done in the example below the script.

You can use Twillio programmable SMS to do that also. There is a free plugin for HS3 that simplifies that process.