Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] Dialogic DTMF ? Gerry Duprey Tue, 25 Aug 1998 13:16:19 -0400 (EDT)

---

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Mark Gilmore wrote:

> Are you guys SURE that the dialogic products
> perform LOCAL pickup/hangup/DTMF detection ?

I'm pretty sure they don't do any monitoring of the local line status
available directly via the TAPI stuff. 

Going back over the start of the thread, I see that was something people
were looking for as a impetus to do this project. :-(

I'm coming from a "reliable implementation" standpoint as a reason for
pushing Dialogic (or any dedicated telephony board), but thats probably
not what everyone is wanting.

I did have this conversation with Dialogic a while back about being able
to detect the line being in use - they really didn't have a good solution.
One engineer hinted that it should be possible, but you'd have to diddle
with the hardware directly.

An alternative approach, that could work with nearly anything, is a line
sensing relay.  These are inserted into the phone line (anywhere, really) 
and close a set of contacts whenever the phone line is brought into use
(i.e. you get a dialtone).  You only need to insert them as the line
enters the house - not at each phone. They are reasonably cheap (less than
$20) and could probably be wired into a digital input board and/or a
control signal on a parallel or serial board. One place to look for them
is at

	http://www.sandman.com/wizard.html

> I emailed them asking if thay have any product
> which can do this.

I'd probably recommend talking to their sales department who are generally
pretty good about putting you right into contact with technical people in
a "pre-sales" mode.  Things may have changed in the last year (I hope!).

Gerry Duprey                     EMAIL: gerry@msage.com 
Micro Sage Software Systems      VOICE: (734) 663-0444
130 South First Street             WWW: http://www.msage.com/~gerry
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA

---