Vera to call my phone?

Developer's Corner General Dev Discussions
#1

What do you think about integration of a simple SIP-client into the firmware? It would add another way of notification - Vera could dial my office number and read a message.

In fact, it would open many new use cases, such as “emergency button” that would cause multiple destination to ring; or ability to control Vera with DTMF…

#2

That’s a great idea. We actually have already put in place the ability to do voice notifications. The firmware in Vera is tiny, so we didn’t put a SIP stack in each Vera. But, you can request voice notifications and it sends a secure message to the findvera server, which has a sip gateway to make the actual call, and a text-to-speech engine to read off the message to you (room, device that generated it, etc.). The gateway isn’t fully functional yet, but Vera is already doing it’s part.

The emergency button is something we didn’t think of. What was your intended use case? You mean like a Z-Wave remote an elderly person could carry which they could push if they fall or if there’s a burglar or something to have it call 911? Can you expand on your idea?

#3

This is ingenious, really. I was stirring my ideas on merging Z-wave and VoIP in one “virtual box” for long time, but I never thought that SIP stack doesn’t have to be locally deployed. Vera surely can tell the server what to do – a servlet, XML – easy! And having server you can expand functionality not being limited by hardware capacity. Nice!

But Asus 500g is a fairly powerful device, people run DD-WRT with Asterisk server on it, which is much more then just SIP stack. :slight_smile:

Anyways, below are the use cases

  1. “Emergency button”
    Z-wave event (any) to trigger Vera to initiate simultaneous calls to a predefined list of numbers (call hunt) and read predefined message. Think elderly person, a babysitter, etc. Said that I’m not sure I’d be messing with real 911 – it may raise expectations too high, which can lead to some legal consequences.
  2. “Lazy dialing”
    Z-wave event (any) to trigger Vera to initiate two-leg call: user presses button on the controller, findvera initiates a call to me, and another call to the predefined party – and connects them. Both phones ring – all I need is to pickup my phone and talk. This feature is known as “webcall”, and available from many providers, normally all vera or findvera need to do is to do http post with parameters to their server.

Thinking again, you could simply allow user to specify http URL that vera would post as one of the possible “reactions” on z-wave event. It would allow users to trigger all kinds of custom services. Just a weird example of what would be possible. These days it’s trendy to have real time location on social networks. Services supporting it are updatable by posting a single URL with longitude and latitude as parameters. Vera could perform such an update from motion detector event – the person got home.

#4

Yeah, that would be cool. I’ll keep it on the wish list for new features.

#5

Integration, in the future, with a device called MagicJack (www.magicjack.com) would be the most ideal.

I’ve heard rumors of support of MagicJack on Linux, which probably could interface with Vera. Something to think about and watch out for.

#6

MagicJack installs crapware on your PC that very hard to delete later.
Generic softphone could work with any service without being locked to any of them - but it only makes sense to enable Vera to do notification calls, which it already does by other means. If all you want is being able to call without PC running - get a good linux ATA, such as Linksys PAP2T, and make calls without PC running. No need to put it on Vera.

#7

Wouldn’t it be nice to incorporate something like magicjack and have the security part dial 911 and TTS a message so you would basically have an auto dialer for your home security and not have to pay monthly fees.

#8

Is it legal to call 911 from an auto dialer with TTS? AFAIK there are laws about ‘fake’ 911 calls and a homeowner can be prosecuted for abusing 911. I’m not sure where this would fall. But my guess is the police would be pretty pissed if, say, a sensor kept tripping and they got flooded with automated 911 calls from a particular home.

#9

That would be pretty funny though. I don’t think it would be any different if I had a regular security system that, after waiting the set time to disarm it, sent the police via a pay-per-month company that manually called them. I have seen cheap radio shack-like security systems that have auto dialers to ANY number you want. I am sure people put the local PD as a phone #. That would be a great way for Vera to be a security system that also contacted the police if not “disarmed” in a certain amount of time. Maybe we can put ADT under. lol

#10

I checked around a bit on the net last night and didn’t find a whole lot about having to have a permit or an autodialer being against the law. I did, however, see tons of emergency dialers for sale for security systems and the elderly. On one site though I did see at the bottom where it said to check with your local law enforcement to make sure the dialer is legal. I don’t see it being a problem as long as Mi Casa Verde puts the same disclosure on one.

#11

Whatever you guys do, don’t lock Vera into a single closed vendor like Skype or MagicJack.
Best is to leave user an option to enter his SIP credentials and to use provider of choice.
My provider offers native e911 services, so I clearly would prefer to use it.

#12

I agree about the statement of the crapware. I have a dedicated 1GHz machine in the garage just for the MagicJack.

However, if necessary components were already on the router, and could just use the hardware component of the MagicJack, that would be a very nice setup.

You can’t beat the price of $20 a year for unlimited North America calls.

#13

(bump)

Has the latest (Luup) firmware release added the “Call me by phone” functionality that pre-Luup releases only hinted at?

I have to ask, because (a) there’s no “Here’s what new features we added in 862” wiki yet, and (b) I’m slow to upgrade firmware until the coast is clear. :slight_smile:

#14

Libra, there’s an extra option in the User’s Setting page, it currently indicates:

 [i](coming soon)Place a voice call to:[/i]

… so not yet. The option is presented just below the ones for SMS and Email.

#15

I have this plugin for that :slight_smile:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=1589.msg5295#msg5295