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Google Voice (GV) and Caller ID Name Display - Custom Caller ID

Started by RobFeldy, December 23, 2011, 07:17:04 AM

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RobFeldy

Problem:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because Google voice does not pass the "Peer Name" to the OBI110 (cost).

Feature Request:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can you please add an ability to upload/enter Caller ID info in to the device to Override what Google Voice "Peer Name" is sending (that is null) .  

Uploading would be Nice

Mom At Work,5551231234
Joe,5551231234
....

A local file something like a host file on a PC.  Overrides the DNS name lookup.   This option would be nice for everyone as being able to put in "Mom at Work" or "Dad at Home" when it shows up would be nice vs "JOHN SMITH"

(While it would be nice to pull from external source I would be very happy just to upload a file (export/import)  )

Thanks

(If you like this feature too reply with "Yes Please" ) 

Robert


Everton

The OBiON network is hosted "in the cloud", could each user upload their contact list from Google Voice and the CNAM be pulled from this list, instead of a host PC?  What about pulling the info from the populated 99-speed dial list available from OBiTALK?


Quote from: RobFeldy on December 23, 2011, 07:17:04 AM
Problem:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because Google voice does not pass the "Peer Name" to the OBI110 (cost).

Feature Request:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can you please add an ability to upload/enter Caller ID info in to the device to Override what Google Voice "Peer Name" is sending (that is null) .  

Uploading would be Nice

Mom At Work,5551231234
Joe,5551231234
....

A local file something like a host file on a PC.  Overrides the DNS name lookup.   This option would be nice for everyone as being able to put in "Mom at Work" or "Dad at Home" when it shows up would be nice vs "JOHN SMITH"

(While it would be nice to pull from external source I would be very happy just to upload a file (export/import)  )

Thanks

(If you like this feature too reply with "Yes Please" ) 

Robert


jilebi

Would love to have this feature!!! Really needed for Wife Approval Factor (WAF) for acceptance of this solution, especially with phones nowadays having Talking Called ID which voice synthesizes and reads out the caller id name!!

RevKev

I'll vote this up.

I think speed dials (and adding name in the obi device) would be great as a first source and my OBiTalk account (vcard upload or sync with contacts?) as a secondary source. Of course that assumes (a) the device has storage for all names/numbers and (b) OBiTalk can provision storage space for each account. An increase in the number of speed dials would be a plus.

Additionally, it would be nice if on any incoming call via any source, if the caller name is missing or in a list of known ambiguous values, that the name be looked up locally (i.e. "wireless caller", "unknown", "private", etc.).

MichiganTelephone

This would be highly appreciated.  I'd also suggest having the ability to enter a number lookup URL that could make a http request to a local or remote server, using a substitution variable, for example:

http://192.168.0.100/lookup?%number%

This would go to a server on a machine on the local network that would look up the number.  Of course, you might be able to use certain other publicly-available sources.  ;)
Inactive, no longer posting or responding to messages.  Goodbye and good luck.  Some of my old Obihai-related blog posts have been moved to http://tech.iprock.com - note this in NOT my blog; I have simply given the owner permission to repost some of my old stuff.

BobTeatow

I "second the motion" - Caller Name PLEASE!

The idea of offloading to another server, reachable by Tcp/ip hostname or even just IP address, is great.
Could be over http or some other (semi) standard protocol.
That would allow us (or third parties) to hook into any services and/or databases we like.

A refinement would be to ring immediately, and in parallel commence the caller name request.
If the OBI gets a name response before the phone goes off-hook, re-do the ring sequence with the caller's number and name. 

Another refinement would be to keep a cache of caller-number/caller-name in the OBI.

dahosepipe

yes PLEASE!   This would be wonderful to have.  Even nicer if it could integrate with my GV contacts, but I'm happy to upload or configure manually.

thighdude

I agree with the posts above and would love to see a feature where external web CNAM databases / services could be queried so that caller ID name can be populated in cases where the provider (e.g. Google Voice) only provides caller ID number.

QBZappy

Have a look here http://riotouslabs.com/Products/GrowlerID . OBi forum member Brian Hasden has been working on a very interesting project which addresses cnam lookup using an OBi. One feature is especially interesting. I believe that it also pops up google contact names as the caller ID name if it is already populated in the Google contact list.

History of Changes:
0.5 - 2011-12-12 - Added page in configuration wizard for configuring an Obihai device
0.4 - 2011-11-29 - Added support for Facebook photo lookup of incoming caller
0.3 - 2011-11-07 - Added support for FreeCNAM contact lookup     <-------- Notable feature
0.2 - 2011-10-29 - First stable release to include baseline functionality
0.1 - 2011-09-30 - Initial Release

I believe that Brian initially developed this app for personal use. It is not clear what his intentions are. At the moment it seems to be freeware. Brian has mentioned to me some ideas about the features he is planning to incorporate into the app. This is one 3rd party app worth keeping an eye on. It can be used to provide network caller ID as it works with Growl, a notification system for Mac, windows, (Mumbles for linux, google it)

Current version: GrowlerID 0.5 . The expiration date of the app has been pushed out to April 1, 2012. (web site incorrectly states Feb 1, 2012). Give it a try.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

bhasden

QBZappy, thanks for the plug. The program did indeed start as a personal project. I've been working to make GrowlerID more user friendly, and as a result, have had to slow down the release cycle a bit in order to work on larger features.

RiotousLabs is a microISV (basically meaning it's just me for now), so some features are taking a bit longer than I'd like. I am currently testing OBi auto-discovery (allowing for usage of OBi devices with a dynamic IP), general UI improvements, along with a couple of features that are still in early alpha. If anyone is interested in testing or has any questions, feel free to PM me or contact me through the RiotousLabs website.

BobTeatow

How does GrowlerID "spy" on my OBI device(s) and/or incoming calls?

(I haven't tried to reverse engineer it.)  One way would be to "promiscuously" read all traffic on the LAN, looking for packets going to the OBI ...  Hmmm...

A much smarter way would be fork every call to a hacked soft-Sipphone and have that sipphone do the CID/name lookup....  For example I have my OBI configured to fork most calls to extension 103 of my VOIP.ms account, which is handled by a SIPURA and a phone in my spare room.... 
Hmmm... I could also fork calls to the hacked-soft Sipphone...

bhasden

Quote from: BobTeatow on February 21, 2012, 01:23:17 PM
How does GrowlerID "spy" on my OBI device(s) and/or incoming calls?

(I haven't tried to reverse engineer it.)  One way would be to "promiscuously" read all traffic on the LAN, looking for packets going to the OBI ...  Hmmm...

A much smarter way would be fork every call to a hacked soft-Sipphone and have that sipphone do the CID/name lookup....  For example I have my OBI configured to fork most calls to extension 103 of my VOIP.ms account, which is handled by a SIPURA and a phone in my spare room.... 
Hmmm... I could also fork calls to the hacked-soft Sipphone...

It's really simple actually. It just polls the status page on the device every couple of seconds to see if there is an incoming call. That portion of code was derived from the work of MichiganTelephone (michigantelephone.WordPress.com). It's a very low tech approach but it has been working well for me at home for the past 4 or 5 months.

BobTeatow

Oh!  Well that's better than watching every packet... But it's still polling, which means a lot of wasted cycles, and a worst case delay that is 1/polling_rate.  You're welcome to implement my suggestion, which is much more efficient, responsive and selective!

Linphone is an open source SIP Phone, there are probably others.

If you look into the OBI configuration doc, you will see how to fork calls to any sip provider - which could be one that runs on your own LAN.  Can't be too hard to hack something together.

However, this still doesn't get us the caller name on my telephone set - which is where I want it.  (Unless I only use an Android phone on which I also run something like GrowlID?)   And without the OBI knowing what is going on we don't quite get there...  Of course I could have OBI NOT ring my phone, but pass the call to my own server and then have that server pass the call back to the OBI... but then I may as well toss the OBI!  We really want the function integrated into the OBI.


bhasden

Quote from: BobTeatow on February 21, 2012, 02:05:40 PM
Oh!  Well that's better than watching every packet... But it's still polling, which means a lot of wasted cycles, and a worst case delay that is 1/polling_rate.  You're welcome to implement my suggestion, which is much more efficient, responsive and selective!

Linphone is an open source SIP Phone, there are probably others.

If you look into the OBI configuration doc, you will see how to fork calls to any sip provider - which could be one that runs on your own LAN.  Can't be too hard to hack something together.

However, this still doesn't get us the caller name on my telephone set - which is where I want it.  (Unless I only use an Android phone on which I also run something like GrowlID?)   And without the OBI knowing what is going on we don't quite get there...  Of course I could have OBI NOT ring my phone, but pass the call to my own server and then have that server pass the call back to the OBI... but then I may as well toss the OBI!  We really want the function integrated into the OBI.

Agreed that the polling is less than ideal, but right now I have it configured at home to poll once every 5 seconds and it works well. At that rate, checking the OBi device 12 times a minute seems to be worth the tradeoff for simplicity.

It would be great if the OBi device had some sort of API where you could subscribe to be notified of incoming calls and the make modifications to the caller id information during that or some other event.

When I started the GrowlerID project, I was looking at a couple of different ways to accomplish the goal of notifying me of who was calling. One of the approaches I looked at was a device that would be put inline between the OBi and the phone. The device would decode the caller id information when an incoming call was detected and then run code to look up the caller and write out the appropriate caller id information to the line when it was retrieved. While that would be a fantastically interesting and fun project, unfortunately the electronics part is a bit out of my league. I prefer to be as productive as I can be with my limited free time and designing circuits would not allow me to work at maximum efficiency. If someone here has some electronics experience I would be more than happy to work with them on getting such a device working, but I can't be the lead for such a project. The initial research I did on the topic led me to a few project that were built on the Arduino platform that were able to decode the incoming caller id. From there, you'd need to write code to negate the original incoming caller id signal so that the original caller id information is not displayed on the phone. Then, you'd have to look up the caller information and then write the new information out to the line.

A simple diagram of the physical setup:


                              [ethernet jack]
                                    |
                                    |
[OBi phone jack]----------[caller id lookup device]----------[phone]


QBZappy

Brian,

If you go that route, the info contained here might be interesting. Technical aspects of CID formatting.
http://www.talkingcallerid.com/ModemDriver.htm

Wouldn't a voice modem do the trick?
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

bhasden

Quote from: QBZappy on February 22, 2012, 03:46:30 PM
Brian,

If you go that route, the info contained here might be interesting. Technical aspects of CID formatting.
http://www.talkingcallerid.com/ModemDriver.htm

Wouldn't a voice modem do the trick?

I don't believe a voice modem would work because it would have no way to ring the connected OBi device. If I'm understanding what you're suggesting (I initially thought the same thing), you mean to say that the OBi would connect up to the voice modem which would then connect up to the phone. In that scenario, you have no way to ring the phone.

I actually asked this question to the smart folks over on StackOverflow (limited it's scope to stuff they'd be familiar with). Feel free to check out the answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7988592/make-phone-connected-to-modem-ring

w84no1

Quote from: bhasden on February 21, 2012, 01:28:57 PM
Quote from: BobTeatow on February 21, 2012, 01:23:17 PM
How does GrowlerID "spy" on my OBI device(s) and/or incoming calls?

(I haven't tried to reverse engineer it.)  One way would be to "promiscuously" read all traffic on the LAN, looking for packets going to the OBI ...  Hmmm...

A much smarter way would be fork every call to a hacked soft-Sipphone and have that sipphone do the CID/name lookup....  For example I have my OBI configured to fork most calls to extension 103 of my VOIP.ms account, which is handled by a SIPURA and a phone in my spare room.... 
Hmmm... I could also fork calls to the hacked-soft Sipphone...

It's really simple actually. It just polls the status page on the device every couple of seconds to see if there is an incoming call. That portion of code was derived from the work of MichiganTelephone (michigantelephone.WordPress.com). It's a very low tech approach but it has been working well for me at home for the past 4 or 5 months.

I use a perl script to monitior the syslog for incoming calls and it works pretty well.  http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=1723.msg17103#msg17103

dcampbe1

Count my vote too please.  CallerID is so inherently necessary in managing phone traffic AND history.  Incorporating it in any format would be wonderful.  Having a local speed dial directory without it seem a bit moot otherwise.

Thanks for even considering the idea!