[Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Status: initial basic development release v0.1 is in Extras-Dev, this is currently a testing version with limited functionality.

mFakeCaller is a very simple application that fakes an incoming call - for those awkward situations when you just need some excuse to flee! Or to make your mate think his hot girlfriend is calling you a lot, so he breaks up with her in a rage of jealousy and you can chance your arm with her on the rebound. "He said what? Hmm I heard he's been drinking a lot lately. You know, he never really understood you.. but i do... " </sleaze>

Warning: Repeated use of mFakeCaller will probably keep you out of heaven.

This project has been sitting around instarted for a while. As it's been a lazy Sunday today I decided to get started with it. I now have the initial test version 0.1 complete and ready for testing.

Please note as this is the very first version of the project, and indeed my very first project written in QT C++, it's probably got more bugs than an entomology convention. Running it could make your N900 break down in a cold sweat and cry for mama. If you are unsure, please wait for version 1.0 which will be the first confident problem free release.

It's pretty simple to use, there's two modes to it. Once installed you can click the icon to run and you'll get a standard "Private number" spoof call with call tone and rumble. Clicking the answer button greys it out, changes it to a speaker button, and starts the 'call' timer.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...screenshot.png

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...wn_calling.png http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...n_answered.png

The application also accepts parameters, that way you can choose the ringtone, caller image and caller number/name/message - making it much more convincing. For example, you could run:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...rt_calling.png http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...t_answered.png

Find out more about setting up the fake call screen here

Find out how to schedule the fake call here

If the answer button isn't clicked the app automagically closes after 20 seconds. Reject/End closes the app right away.

There's a few things to note about this initial test release:

• Has very little built in scheduling of it's own, but you can easily use a scheduling app like the excellent Alarmed to schedule it. Much easier for me anyway than coding it :p
• Shows in portrait mode only, no landscape love for you Mr "It's not a phone, it's a mobile computer"
• I've put a gears icon on the right top button where in the real UI there is a keypad icon as I thought about making it a settings button instead... may keep/might not..
• My art sucks therefore the app icon sucks, if anyone would like to make a better looking one...
• No entry is made in the call log for the fake call

If that sounds like something that you might have fun with then please go ahead and give it a go :)

Ofcourse I'd appreciate any help spotting/fixing bugs, making improvements, and creating enhancements :)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

nice one .... will give this one a try!!

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

"Answer me fool!", laughed hysterically. Hahaha

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

men,i have always thought about such apps,.really niccee

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

eagerly awaiting version 1.0.thank you

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

sorry but doesnt this get the same response as not answering a phone and clicking reject.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Not that I can think of any use for that app, but wouldn't it be more convincing if you played some audio that sounds like the fake caller talking through the speaker? With some pause in between to answer/comment. That would make it much more convincing. Maybe you can record the audio on your own or find something on freesound.org. Bonus points for an option to select both male and female voices. Extra bonus points for different choices of talk (calm, loud, shouting, hectic, ...).

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

DId you use the Nokia Qt SDK to create this? How has your experience with that been?

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

I don't think you understand what this app is trying to do.

To kojacker, this sounds like a nice app. It would be good to have a GUI to pick a person from your contacts list to pick up the name and image, although you also need a way to type that info in manually for people not in your contacts.

For the time being, I would be happier for the app to not write into the call log. If you ever do get to that point, I would suggest making it optional.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

just intall it.and i was shocked!!!!!!!!!!!

there is no setting for time of call??
no sound when start the call??

no image settings? no contact no settings? no contact name settings?it would be great if call is visible in call log too.then it will be a perfact fake call

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

one more VERY important feature is needed - mute the sound of the device while it is running!
you don't wnat that after someone is convinced you are in a real conversation suddenly you'll get a REAL phone call which will expose that fake...

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

reading all through the thread! when the new update is comming with new features?????we must need it.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Yeah muting and stealing focus during a fake call is a must...

Another idea - play male or female "charlie brown noises" through the earpiece during a fake call, makes it sound more convincing. :D

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

i am wating for all those featurs we r talking about here !!when next update will come ,can annyone tell me?

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

you sir are full of win !

i will donate for this project if you get this one perfected (consider having it trigger if say, you open the camera lense, or camera button or something ) along with the other suggestions

i could think of so many occasions this would have come in handy

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Make it read the current profile ring tone and vibration settings from /home/user/.profiled/custom.ini. /home/user/.profiled/current also tells if the phone is on general or silent.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Hey all, thanks for your interest in mFakeCaller lol You all have such great ideas, let's hope somebody who knows how to do them all gets involved and does them :p

It took days of wrestling with autobuilder to get the project into extras-dev, but during this time I went ahead and created a few of the other features I was going to wait on. For example, user selectable caller names, caller images, backgrounds, and ringtones are currently in the initial release already. The trick is you have to set these when calling the application directly, not from clicking the icon. For example, here's a screenshot I tweeted a couple of weeks ago from my N900 using a panther image for the caller image and the background,

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...er_calling.png http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...r_answered.png

To make the 0.1 test version accept new values, you have to pass them to the application by calling from xterm or through a shell script. The shell script is great because then you can schedule it with alarmed :)

If anyone's interested in the method and not sure how to do it, let me know and I'll write a proper post on how to do it.

From my own testing, it seems a bit slow for the form to load and the ringtone playback starts a second or two behind the vibration. From chatting at the MeeGo conf, it appears that it might be a good idea to move away from forms to use QML for the user interface which should be quicker. Also the slow audio issue appears to be a well known gstreamer problem on the n900. It's annoying but not too bad, I might just have to learn to live with that.

You might have seen from the dev forum that me and QtCreator are falling out these days, once we're back on speaking terms I'll start rewriting the UI in QML just to see if there's an improvement. I'll start write a GUI front end to enable changing of settings from the icon click, that's going to be more user friendly for people than working with a shell script ofcourse.

There's also a problem with the application manager icon in v0.1, it's missing. Doesnt affect the application at all but you dont see an icon when in app manager. So i need to find out what's wrong wit that too. I think it's the base64 encoding in the file that went into autobuilder.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

how can we schedule alarmed to run mfakecaller? can you post shell script and command to execute that shell script? or is there any other way round?

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

so i m waiting for ..........

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

DID you Find the way to do it .. i also need it .. Can Somebody Help Us Plz!

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Thanks again for the thread bump :p No luck with routing audio to the earpiece speaker to simulate a voice, it appears it can't be done (or nobody has found how to yet)

lol i think im the only one who knows the code well enough to help you with that :) Scheduling with the shell script is quite simple really but it's too late tonight to start writing a guide, I'll document the process properly and post it up by the end of the week.

Actually just this moment I've finally managed to get the new qml version of the mfakecaller working, I ported it to a Qt Quick project and found that I didnt like how the view widget behaved there so I ported into back to a Qt Application and now using a form widget to hold the view :P I also have a new basic gui done that you can use to change settings from the icon click. With some luck with the autobuilder I might have the newer version up by the end of this weekend too.

Apologies nicholes, I only noticed your post today. Please understand this application is in extras-development, it is not close to finished or even ready for testing yet. We're still at v0.1 which means the backbone is there, once the app has been formed into something worth testing it will be v1.0 and moved to Extras-Testing. I think I laid out quite clearly the limitations in the first post but I apologise if they weren't clear enough.

However I am curious why there is no sound. There should be sound, it should be playing Lumina.aac which is in your ringtones folder (/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/Ringtones/Lumina.aac). Please check your sound and volume settings, I have written the app so the loudness is controlled by the volume up/down buttons on the side of the n900. If you still can't hear anything we might have a proper bug so please let me know so i can look at it.

I'll show more about how to change the settings by the end of the week, and I'll show how it can be scheduled by the application alarmed. It relies on alarmed because mfakecaller doesn't currently have it's own scheduling code, simply because I haven't learned how to do that yet. If someone would like to get onboard to help out they'd be very welcome :P Ofcourse this is an opensource project and everyone is free to join in :) At the moment it's only me so the speed of new features are bottlenecked by my own weaknesses Im afraid :rolleyes:

Most people ive asked didnt want the fake call logged as it would be too confusing with the real calls, perhaps it's an option to turn off and on in a future release :)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Great app Kojacker!
I've been imagining this for a long time during the wasting of far too much time as non key person in meetings hoping for a relief phone call to come in.

If you ever get to the scheduling code: please think about insisting caller function where you reject the call at first but keep receiving incoming calls.

Upon the initial call you "try" to silent your phone, but 1 minute later the caller is there again and you stand up "please excuse me to take this call first..

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

well here is no sound i uninstalled it and reinstall to get something new but there is no sound ...i clik app icon and call started only vibration and i can reject call or i can answer and no option beside this i can do (i can see volume bar when press vol. botton during call,but no sound here) may be i m unlucky this time

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Hmm.. let's see if we can work this out.

I don't have any problems playing sound files using the same version you have, can anyone else confirm the sound does or doesn't play on their N900s?

nicholes could you try the following for me?

• Lumina.aac is a bit strange ringtone in that it's a little quiet and the tune doesn't constantly make a 'ding' so let it run a few seconds to see if anything does play.
• Although your volume may be up, please check that your N900 isnt in silent profile. Change it to "General" profile for testing.
• Please check that Lumina.aac does exist in your ringtones folder. Your ringtone folder is accesible at /home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/Ringtones/. As far as I'm aware everyone should have the Lumina.aac file in here.
• If none of these help, please run mfakecaller from xterminal to see if any error messages are logged ot the console. I'll detail how below.

Open a new X Terminal and at the '$' prompt type in:
and press enter to start up the app. This opens a new window with the mfakecaller ui, close the new window down to finish it running and you can see the X Terminal window again. The app should have already tried to play the ringtone sound file, please check the XTerm console output for any warnings or errors. Please note that you may see one warning from gstreamer saying that because of it's version some video features have been disabled - that's actually fine, you can ignore that warning. It's anything else we're interested in, please reply and write back what you found.

Here's a screenshot from my XTerm showing what I mean, hopefully you can see the same in yours.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...124-140759.png

Thanks again for your help with testing, I appreciate it.

Thanks ste-phan, it's a great idea and it's definitely in the plan :)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

[QUOTE=kojacker;882072]
nicholes could you try the following for me?

QUOTE]

first of all sorry for the late reply!

it was not silent profiled

Lumina.aac i could not find it in /home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/Ringtones/Lumina.aac

infact there is no folder called "Ringtones"in my device (i used file box)

and then i tried xterminal new window open (i cloased it)but there was no warning in x terminal like yours! there was only what i type

/usr/bin/mfakecaller

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

@nicholes

The correct command is

You need the ./.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

u r right i forgot i always forget everytime

ok let us see what happend(as i told u there is no folder)

i hope this time no mistake!!! i tried two ways i do not know which one is correct!

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

If you are in the root folder (i.e. when you first open Xterm), then the full path to the Ringtones folder is:

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Hmm how strange.. I was under the impression that every N900 had a Ringtone folder in that path. Well atleast we know what the problem seems to be - mfakecaller is looking for a sound file and a folder that doesn't exist in that path on your handset. On the bright side, atleast it handles the error gracefully :)

nicholes, it looks like you have a few sound files on your phone. Just for testing audio playback, can run mfakecaller again from your XTerm and we'll include some commands to play one of them? Try this:

You'll find that the caller name should change to nicholes, the second "" is empty (which is the image string input) so the caller image will be missing this time (you can add a path to an image on your phone if you like), and the third string is the full path to whatever sound file you have to test on the phone.

Try it out and see if it plays the sound file correctly. If it's not too long, you should hear the sound loop before the app closes (unanswered timeout).

That's what I thought too, is it possible it might be setup differently on different handsets?

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

[QUOTE=kojacker;882203]

QUOTE]

it worked here caller name is changed and also sound enabled (may be i have an indian mobile it is diffrent little bit i think. it has no skype and no folder called "more" in menu as i have seen in devices)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

[QUOTE=nicholes;882227]Cool :)

I'm glad to hear that the sound playing code is working fine, that's a relief! Thank you for taking the time to test it with me.

I was hoping that the Ringtone folder would be standard across all phones. I wanted to point to "Ringtones/Lumina.aac" as a default test sound, something that will play 'out of the box'. Also I didnt want to have to include a sound file with the package for the user to test with (makes it bigger to download). Perhaps there is an issue with different firmwares.

Ofcourse a method of selecting which file to play as a ringtone is something that was on the radar to be done anyway, so this problem should be easier to resolve in the next release.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

So i thought to Say thx to kojacker again and Say it one More time , How do we Setup Alramed to trigger the App in Certain time .

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Copy paste this:
/usr/bin/mfakecaller "nicholes" "" "/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/Your_Chosen_Sound.file_type"
Change nicholes and 'Your_Chosen_Sound.file_type'.
to 'Save Preset' box.
example:
/usr/bin/mfakecaller "Jackson, Michael" "" "/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/crap.mp3"
Insert name 'test' to 'Save Event' box.
Change 'Alarm' to 'Command execution'.
Change 'Every minute' to 'Only once'.
Update 'Date' and 'Time'. Click 'Save event'

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Very Well , Thx ,, worked Very Good

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Apologies onasre, I've been grabbing a spare 30 mins here, 20 mins there all week. Busy time for me this moment with thanksgiving, but I'm pleased to see notherdumbass has me covered :)

Just to expand on what notherdumbass wrote, you can call mfakecaller with up to 4 parameters, or none or at all! Here's what I mean:

• calling mfakecaller with no parameters afterwards gives you the normal default fake call screen. For example:
  
  Code:

  ---

  /usr/bin/mfakecaller

  ---

  http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...wn_calling.png
  
• calling mfakecaller with one parameter afterwards changes the contact name/number that is on the fake call screen from "Private number" to whatever you written in there. For example:
  
  Code:

  ---

  /usr/bin/mfakecaller "onasre was here"

  ---

  http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...e_was_here.png
  
• using two parameters changes the caller name/number and the caller image. For example:
  
  
  Code:

  ---

  /usr/bin/mfakecaller "Answer me fool!" "/home/user/MyDocs/.documents/mr_t_loves_nuts.jpg"

  ---

  http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...rt_calling.png
  
• you can use a third parameter to set the ringtone to a different sound file. For example:
  
  
  Code:

  ---

  /usr/bin/mfakecaller "Waylon Smithers" "/home/user/MyDocs/photos/smithers.jpg" "/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/ymca.aac"

  ---

• finally, the fourth parameter accepts a stylesheet value to change the background. For example:
  
  
  Code:

  ---

  /usr/bin/mfakecaller "+44288Panther"  "/home/user/MyDocs/photos/panther.jpg" "/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds/grrrrrrr.aac" 'background-image: url("/home/user/MyDocs/photos/panther.jpg");'

  ---

  http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...er_calling.png

It's fairly straightforward, the rules to remember are the ordering and that for changing the caller image, ringtone, and background you have to give it the full path on your phone so it can find it. Background is very flexible, as it's a stylesheet you can just add a color, a stripe, whatever fits into a normal Qt element's stylesheet which is basically the same as anything on the web page. It's also more trickier, notice the two different types of quotes and the semi colon (';') at the end. As we're passing a full stylesheet value in we have to remember all the syntax that goes along with it too.

The mfakecaller app is designed so if anything is linked wrong it will still run, just whatever that is not found will be missing from the screen. So if it looks like something isnt how you expected it or you got no sound playing, then the best place to start troubleshooting is to double check you got the folder path right.

It'll make more sense when you try it out, so go ahead and have a play with it. :)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Now that you know all the commands, here's a quick scheduling example using Alarmed

When you run Alarmed and select "New event" button you get this "Add event" screen
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...128-105525.png

We don't want an alarm, we want Alarmed to trigger mfakecaller to run at a certain time. So touch the button that currently says "Alarm" and change it from the drop down so it says "Command execution" instead
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...128-105536.png

Also we don't want it to run "Every minute" so change the scheduling button to something else. You can choose a date or time, for testing let's choose "In.." from it's drop down. "In.. " sets a delay.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...128-105559.png

Once you've given your alarm a name and filled in a command your new alarm setup should look like this. Here, I'll get a call from best friend of opensource Steve Jobs in 5 seconds time - he's a very important man and he might sue me if I keep him waiting!
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...128-105434.png

Simply hit "Save event" and in 5 seconds (or so) you should start feeling the familiar rumblings of mfakecaller starting up. Easy, right? :)

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...bs_calling.png

Because Alarmed saves your previous events, it keeps a list of them by name that you only need to go back into and trigger again when you need them. Think of them a little like fake call profiles, saves a lot of time filling them in :)

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

This Perfect for Me , I have A Friends who talks more than wht i need to hear . Some time wish if someone Calls me to Take Time Out .. mFakecaller Got my back Now . Whoooooo. Thx for this Great App

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

Is it possible to set some kind of # rather than the "private caller"

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

It takes a simple string value, so you can set the value as numbers, letters, even symbols (+ for dialing codes etc) or a combination of everything. So u can change it when calling it, see the examples above.

Do you mean the default? Not at the moment, it's planned for the next release. This weekend Ive actually started learning how QSettings works to try and do just that. The next version will have a settings menu that will enable you to save default values.

Re: [Announce] mFakeCaller - your friendly portable excuse! (Incoming call spoofer)
 

is new update is coming with all new features which has mentioned in the thread??