I just finished a simple plugin allowing to automatically connect two (or more) parties via phones and/or VoIP. Basically user clicks ‘On’ on Vera UI or z-wave hand-held controller, his phone rings, his party’s phone rings, they can talk. It might not look very useful as it is (although think of Emergency Button), but it allows to initiate automatic calls on events from all kinds of devices and sensors.
It uses 3rd party system (pbxes.com) to do actual calls (they do offer free accounts, so it shouldn’t be a problem). System allows to do all kinds of cool stuff, such as IVR (voice menu), conference rooms, etc; so being able to plug Vera into it might bring some interesting possibilities.
I thought some of you might find it useful for your own projects…
That’s cool. What I’d recommend is creating a Wiki page on our wiki site with instructions and information. Then email me the upnp/lua files and I’ll add it to the Luup gallery database and link to the wiki page in the ‘Instructions’ field.
You can make Vera work with anything, even your pasta pot, if you find a way to interface with it. PBXes has “webcall” feature, i.e. it allows third party to ask it to make a call using HTTP request. I’m not sure specifically about PIAF, but I’m pretty sure the guys behind it have webcall feature among optional packages - PIAF is known as one of (if not “the”) most feature-rich Asterisk wrappers. Check at http://nerdvittles.com, or send him an email. And yes, let me know too
You can also try to ask about webcall here: VOIP Tech Chat forum | DSLReports, ISP Information
BTW, I just discovered that PBXes is working on enabling calls to Skype, which means it may well be possible to use the same plugin to call Skype on one side. Not that I find it much useful, but those 7 people on this planet that still use Skype might like it
Another idea is Google Voice, which seems to have webcall feature. I wish I could try to implement it, but they don’t give GV to Canadians.
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I’m starting to use the plugin for custom phone notifications - that I can actually control. There are ways to generate nice custom voice messages to use for custom notifications, all you need is to upload wav files to PBXes, and configure “Digital Receptionist” to read them to you…
Job failed - give me a call. Sprinkler refused to start - tell me. Freeze/water sensor, motion detector - leave me a message…
This BTW could be a workaround for an alternative way to send notification emails - if you make Vera to leave you a voicemail, PBXes will email it to you right away.
Ok, here it goes: http://nerdvittles.com/?p=168
I don’t have PIAF, but if you can make click-to-call work as described in the article above, I’ll most likely be able to convert the plugin to use it.
Well, pbxes should be setup as if you were to make calls the regular way - after all it has to make a call for you.
Outbound route + trunk to your termination provider required
