xapmcsCID XAP / CID / ACID / NetCallerID / Modem / HSPhone / Outlook xAP Node

[SteveD]

Thanks, I added the UID and Source Segment and it works. I am getting a pop from DesktopCID, now can I make it speak as well?

SteveD

[Michael McSharry]

What do you want it to say? Something like "Sweety, the phone is ringing could you please listen to what the telemarketer has to say"? Where do you want it said?

[SteveD]

Well, that would be ok, but I would like to announce who is calling and say it on all three PCs.

SteveD

[Michael McSharry]

The CID application has xap.voice schema supported which is the one that does both tts and vr. It will speak the name with an untargeted message. I'll post mcsxapVoice which supports this schema.

[SteveD]

Great, thanks Michael.

SteveD

I downloaded mcsxapVoice and it noow announces the caller!

[Michael McSharry]

Microsoft Outlook's Contacts folder xapmcsCID has been included to the list of potential sources to corrrelate a phone number with a displayed named. It will also allow the Outlook Contact to be created when a new number / name has been received. Posted as V1.2.0

[Talaray]

xAP CID and xAP are wonderful....

Hi Mike,
I've downloaded and installed these, and I've got them to work with my system, and lo, not only the Wife, but the entire Family have expressed Acceptance. (I vote that FAF is a higher score than WAF...) But I have a couple questions. I have the xAP framwork installed, including the xAP plugin for Homeseer. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to trigger an event when a call comes in (i.e., when callerID info is received).

Currently when a call is received, the xAP Voice app announces the call, using the info in friends.txt, if applicable. But apparently this is all happening outside Homeseer control. I'm also using SlimServer, and I'd really like to be able to pause Slimserver (I have a script that will do that), let the Caller ID announce (this is the piece I'm missing), and then restart SlimServer (I have a script that will do that.

I do understand how to call xAP events from Homeseer scripts, but I can't seem to control the xapCID device.

On another (possibly related) note, when I call into my home, I do get the "new xAP hardware found" message from the Homeseer xAP plugin. The detected device is mcs.cid.homecontroller, if that helps. And when I click on the "update schema database" button, I don't seem to get any response. Is there any other way to download the schema?

Thanks very much for all your work on this; even in its current state in my environment, we're very pleased - this is a case of "continuous improrement"

[Michael McSharry]

I'd like to help, but there is not too much I tell you. I'm traveling and I've never used the xAP Homeseer plugin that you are using. The questions about how to trigger events and in-general exercise the xAP/Homeseer interface should be posted on the xAP Plugin forum or on James' site.

There are a few things I do recall. The primary message transmitted is the CID.Incoming schema and this is something that the xAP Plugin should understand. I believe it will also send a yet-to-be-approved Homeseer-related schema as an event that is the equivalent of commanding a Homeseer device status to change to ON and then OFF ten seconds later. This is the message I actually use to trigger my Homeseer-related events. James' xAP Homeseer Plugin should accept this Homeseer-related schema as raw or unknown and then you can associate a Homeseer device with it and this device will be updated each time the message is received. This is what I would expect, but I don't really know what James did.

There are SlimP3 connectors available from xAPFramework.net and there are mappers that I think will translate a CID.Incoming into an OSD schema. The OSD schema is used with the SlimP3. I don't have a SlimP3 so I'm can only point you in that direction and home there will be something usefull there for you. The xAP Wiki that you can get to from xapAutomation.org is another place to snoop for SlimP3-related goodies.

If I was the system architect I would not have Homeseer involved in the CID - SliMP3 transaction. The xAP SliMP3 connector should be responsible for managing use of that hardware and it should be provided prioritized audio or text that needs to be applied to the SliMP3. If Homeseer has some value to add to the message then the choice may be appropriate to funnel it through HS, but otherwise why depend upon a middleman with simply adds delay to the transaction. Of course when one does not have a clean sheet of paper and needs to design with whatever is available then any solution is a good one.

Continue to ask and I will help as best I can. What may be helpful for James is a capture of the message(s) that xapmcsCID is delivering. If you have not already got it, then get the excellent xapViewer from xapFramework.net.

[Talaray]

Thanks very much for the reply! I absolutely agree that from an architectural perspective, there's no sense going through Homeseer to deliver a message from the CID device to the SliMP3 device; I'd really prefer to keep things separate. This is one of the cool things about xAP - I used to think of HS as the hub for everything, and now with the xAP framework, I can let HS concentrate on automation and home control.

However, at the moment, I don't yet have the expertise with xAP to figure out how to get one component to perform a series of activities based on receipt of a message from another component. In this case, I'd really like for the xAP voice to generate a message that says "I'm talking" (and later, "I'm done talking"), and somehow for the SliMP3 device to pause the music while xAPvoice is talking. I don't know how to do either of those yet, but I'm still looking into it. I gather that it'll take some VB programming, and I'm not a VB programmer, but my son is taking a class at the moment, and perhaps I can convince him to take on a special project

My initial guess is that the voice program would then need to support the schema for audio and media control; does that seem right? I'd guess that there would also need to be flexibility for the user to specify what audio/media messages would be sent, since some people might not care that the voice program talks over the music.

My kludgy solution for my current situation: I use X10 palmpads scattered around the house to control the whole house audio, so I've already created xAP events using the Homeseer xAP conduit so that Homeseer can control the SliMP3 device (SlimServer) in response to those signals. So now I created a HS event to listen for the mcs.CID.xxxxxx variable to go "on" - when it sees that, it pauses SlimServer for a specified interval, long enough to let the CID announcement happen unimpeded.

So if I understand correctly, when the CID device (NetCallerID) is triggered, it sends a xAP message directly to the xapVoice device to make the announcement, as well as a message to HS to change the variable. HS then sees the change in HS variable, and sends a message to SlimServer to pause the music for 7 seconds. I do notice that the mcs.CID.xxxx variable didn't change back to "off" on its own, so I created another event to watch and change it to "off" after it's "on" for 10 seconds.

A question for you about the "friends.txt" file - I see that the third column can contain a wav. file that will be played when the associated number is calling. I'm assuming that the wav. file needs to be specified as a full pathname, correct? Are quotes necessary? And does the default application for wav. files need to be open at the time?

Thanks very much for all your contributions!

[Michael McSharry]

xAP can be done via scripting when using the xapax.ocx ActiveX control, but I have never tried this so I do not know where the shortcomings may be.

The key for you at this point is to understand what capabilities the SliMP3 connector provides. I know Stuart has this unit and uses it's display. I have used his connector in mcsMusic, but it was along time ago and my focus was on the mp3 aspects of it rather than other forms of audio. If there is something that you need from xapmcsCID to make it work better with SliMP3 connector then let me know.

The wav file capability was put into mcsAudrey. The CID aspects of xapmcsCID is the identical code used in mcsAudrey. I do not recall what I did with the wav file in the xAP messages. I'll need to get back to you on that.

I'll also need to look with respect to turning off the CID device code. I may have elected to not do that since the nature of an xAP event message is to indicate the event has occurred and there really is nothing that happened 10 seconds after the CID was received. In mcsAudrey it was needed to make it Homeseer-friendly. I likely provided the message receipt as an event to trigger my Homeseer activity. Perhaps the xAP Conduit plugin can be setup to do the same. This means you may have an event defined rather than a device defined and the receipt of the CID.Incoming can be used to trigger the event. Lots of options available.

[Talaray]

Thanks for the quick reply! So quick that I was still editing my previous message to add something I forgot - so in case you wouldn't have read that - is there any chance of having the xapmcsVoice application support the audio and media control schema? I'm not sure, but it looks to me like if it did, it might be able to tell the SliMP3 connector (and Slimserver) to shut up while it's talking. If that doesn't sound right, I crave enlightenment.....

[hbrantley]

Where is the mscxapvoice posted?

[Thomas]

hbrantley:

If you haven't found it already: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and set your options to show all threads "from the beginning". It is in the first post of the xAP voice thread posted by Michael on Jan 1, 2005. I just downloaded it, so it is still there. And thanks Michael for all the effort you have been putting into both the software and spreading the word on XAP. I'm just getting into it, but I can tell xAP is just what I needed to "tie everything together".

Thomas

[hbrantley]

Thanks, I found it. I also echo your comments on Michael and XAP.

[snedecor]

Can't get xAPMCSCID to send proper init string to modem.

Michael,

I am trying your application, since Homeseer2 will not support my Hawking PCI modem any longer. My modem uses AT+VCID=1 command to enable reporting, which is defaulted off (for some strange reason). I put that string into your field, but the modem doesn't report CID. In hyperterminal, I can put in the string, and get the standard NAME = and NMBR =, but not from your program.

The serial monitor only reports RING.

It seems that the string is either not being sent to the modem, or that the modem is somehow being reset after the string is sent. To do some debugging, I even placed ATDT 1-555-1212 as the initialization string, and the modem didn't attempt to dial out when the program started.

Any chance you could either create a log of the entire modem communication, so that I can see what is sent to the modem, or enable the serial monitor during the modem initialization tohelp me debug why the string appears not to be successfully sent?

Thanks!

Gayle Snedecor