Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

How do you make the Skype-out call??

With "calling Cards" and "Google Voice-out"; you call the access number or the user's GV-voicemail number, and then start sending DTMF tones to place the actual call.

Google'ing and reading through Skype docs; the closest thing I found for "Skype-out" was "Skype To Go". Which (apparently) requires logging into skype.com to create the access number for the actual destination number. (...then, of course, dialing that access number)

So, is this what VICaR does? Or is there a simpler method that I am missing??

thanks.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

@kbyork - I don't use skypeout myself. I hope active users of skype might have a response for you. I forwarded your question to frochik who was using VICaR for skypeout calls earlier.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

You don't need to login to skype (on the phone) and you don't need to register the phone numbers you want to call.

I don't know if Skype decided to change the name from "skype out" to "skype to go" or if we are using the wrong name since the beginning. They are the same thing.

To prepare your skype account you need go to the skype web site and login. Then you can go to the skype to go tab and enable it. After selecting your location you will be told which number to call (1) to start calls. You also need to register the phone numbers that you are going to be calling FROM (not to), set your pin and you are good to go.

You can then place calls using VICaR, Mycontacts and or manually by calling the phone number (have a go manually if you have any doubts about the process).

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

Great App!

I have a couple of suggestions:

1. I'd like *all* my calls to be routed through vicar. I managed to hack this by manually editing the configuration database to make a record with an empty number pattern field. But it would be nice to be able to do this with the settings editor.

2. Can the length of the DTMF tones be shortened, or made configurable? Would make for a much quicker connection.

3. Could default country and area codes be specified in the configuration and filled in by vicar where they are not included in the phone number? My provider insists on an area code, even though it is common to use phone numbers without area codes here in Australia.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

I agree. There is a long-pending enhancement to allow a default profile to be selected for any country. I had a hard time figuring how to implement that with a single SQL query. I will post it sometime. May be I can get some suggestions.

Unfortunately, no. This depends on maemo's Mission Control service. Until MC is updated to support latest telepathy specification, I can't do anything.

I didn't understand this one. Can you give an example?

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

I'm not sure I follow you entirely now. My suggestion was independent of the country. I simply want all my calls to be routed through a single number.

Strangely enough I could do this with a shell script:

but simply couldn't make the same thing work by modifying callrouter.cpp. :(

OK I live in Melbourne, so a full landline number here looks like +61.3.34567890 ('.' separates country/area code/number). It's very common to just think of this number as just 34567890. But if I don't include at least a '03' at the start then my calling service rejects the number as incomplete - though my GSM service would have no complaint. So what I'd suggest is that if a number doesn't start with '+' (full international code) or whatever the local area code introduction is ('0' in most of the world, '1' in North America, '9' in a few places) then a user-specified default country and area code be supplied. Actually some Australian numbers also start with '1' so to make it work you'd have to be able to specify a string of digits rather than a single digit.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

It will be possible once the default profile option is ready.

I was only looking at telepathy API. I was planning to move away from Nokia/N900-specific CSD Dbus calls to using more generic telepathy to send the DTMF tones. I thought this would make the app ready for say Meego phones :). That seems to be a long shot now, I might as well explore other options.

Did you notice any improvement with using StartDTMF/StopDTMF for each DTMF character? Because even SendDTMF(String) breaks the string into bytes and calls DTMFTone for each byte. You can capture this with dbusmonitor command on system bus. Anyway I'll run some tests this week using StartDTMF.

There will be some challenges to implement this. Similar to your example, what if the number is +61.3.61323456 and is stored as just 61323456. The number looks like it begins with the country code and area code but 613 is part of the local number not an area code. We can not verify using string length because length of phone numbers is not standard across regions.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

OK it's not a problem for me right now as hacking the configuration database did the job.

Yes it did send the DTMF tones faster. The script should probably have some pauses between the Start and Stop messages but I guess the shell interpreter is slow enough to do the job. Apparently 40ms per tone and 40ms between tones is sufficient.

That's what I did when I realised that I could type in the phone number on the keypad faster than VICaR was doing it.

But when I modified your code to do the Start/Stop thing no tones were produced. My hunch is the dbus parameters were getting garbled, since the Start method wants a byte argument and it is likely getting padded to 2 or 4 bytes. But I'm no expert on C++ and don't have the time to become one.

Great. I'll be keen to hear how you get on.

Do people really put the international code without the leading '+'? In that case I guess you are right that nothing can be done. For me, the solution would be simple enough - if the number begins with '+' then leave it alone; if it begins with '0' or '1' (configurable) then prepend '+61' (configurable); else prepend '+613' (configurable). But this really isn't a biggie.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

I ran my test on SendDTMF vs StartDTMF. I did not notice any significant difference in either options. The automated system for my CC is taking 17 sec on an avg in both cases. I'd love to cut it down but I don't see how.

I noticed from dbus monitor log that SendDTMF method does break down the string and sends each character individually with StartDTMF method. That's why there is not much difference.

Anyway, I have uploaded the code I used to test in garage downloads page. If possible run some tests from your side as well and let me know if you notice any improvement.

Re: [Announce] VICaR: Value International Call Router (Calling Card Helper)
 

Right, it did seem a tiny bit faster for me, but it's a bit hard to measure because of the initial pause.

As a suggestion, how about removing the pause - it can always be put into the prefix if it's really required. I'm pretty sure my provider will work without a pause as it's designed to be used by an automated system like this.

Thanks. I'll take a look at this when I get some time.