----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Rolf" To: Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 5:36 PM Subject: Re: [EE]: Yet Another Telephone monitor > Wouldn't it be cheaper to just get her her own phone line? No. > Or better yet, a cell phone with unlimited minutes of service? One day, perhaps. But she has demonstrated the ability to lose anything she is given. The likelihood of her losing an item is proportional to the cost of that item. She would be asking for a replacement cell phone within a week. > That way you'd be able to call her to come home for dinner (yeah, right), > or she can call for a ride when everyone is too drunk to safely drive. > What I am suggesting is an installed capability of the home, not a specific feature for one occupant. I used my daughter simply as an example of one reason why it would be handy to have. As described below, this could also be used for telephone privacy if needed, Turning on an outside ringer only when it is appropriate, Knocking an answering machine off line if someone really picks up, Setting up a user-managed Call Blocking feature based on Caller ID and/or time of day, preventing "pick up's" while the computer is on line (If I ever give up DSL), or even to troubleshoot a dead(off-hook) phone line. If I ever add a second phone line, I could manage auto-switching by adding a second bank of relays and not have to replace all the phones in my home with two-line models. The longer I think about it, the more options I can realize. If the modem also supports DTMF decoding, a call logger could easily be implemented (Both for incoming and outgoing) > Lyle Hazelwood wrote: > > > > As I am slowly piecing my home control system together, > > one of the "later someday" ideas is to add a similar type > > of switch to my residential line.. While this method is not > > directly applicable to your situation, some may find these > > (as yet just dreamware) ideas interesting. > > > > I have seen Caller ID units that include a standard serial > > port for ASCII output. Since I'll be wiring my own > > house up for all the goodies, I'll tie all the phone lines > > together in a star configuration. Later when this part > > of the project is done, I'll be able to add relays to > > selectively ring only particular phones based on the > > caller ID number. > > So how do you plan to handle the 'pickup' of a phone when > it is NOT ringing? It's not easy to separate the 'ringer' lead > on today's electronic phones. I had planned on using relays to disconnect the lines of the phones that should not ring, only during the ring cycle. Yes, relays are crude stuff, but they're cheap and tolerant of line spikes. If I can devise a detector for On/Off hook, any off-hook signal could drop all relays to the normally closed position, enabling all phones. I may be over-simplifying, but a phone switcher like this should be fairly simple to build. A PIC and a half dozen small relays can handle the switching. I'll probably use an old modem with Caller ID for the input, and I already have committed a PC for home management, so the list processing is easily configured and managed. The more "custom" part is wiring all the phones in a star rather than daisy- chaining them together, but I plan on a lot of custom wiring in my home, so this really doesn't present a problem for me. As a single feature, it probably wouldn't be worth building. My own experience with home automation is that the various features of the home complement each other when combined, increasing the usefulness of all other features. Example: Knowing not just room occupancy, but WHO is in each room is not a trivial task, but it adds the ability to "Zone" incoming phone calls. It also adds the option of setting personalized temperature and entertainment settings for each occupant. There's a lot more to do before it's all realized. I have done this kind of thing for many years as a hobby. I'm just tired of using "off the shelf" home automation stuff and being limited in what I can accomplish. By designing my own system from the ground up I can keep my options open for whatever crazy ideas I might dream up in the future. One Key to making this all worthwhile is an easy interface. I won't be using PIC's for the logic behind the system. The computer I have dedicated to mastering the system is extremely easy to program. The PIC's provide remote, intelligent I/O only. Enough rambling, time to go to work. Lyle -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.