Recognizing touch tones

[Dan Coutu]

Bob Bell wrote:
>     Someone has approached me about writing some software that would
> basically provide a phone menu.  It would recognize touch tones (phone
> button presses), gather information, provide voice prompts, and take
> action based upon the information entered.  Any idea what it would take
> to accomplish this?  I'm pretty sure I could record WAVs/MP3s/etc for
> the voice prompts and such, but the biggest question for me is around
> the use of the phone.  Specifically:
>     1) How do I respond to incoming calls?
>     2) How do I get an audio file to play into the telephone?
>     3) How do I recognize touch tones as input?

Bob, I don't know about the software side of things but do know that you 
can buy off the shelf hardware packages to do what is called Computer
Integrated Telephony (CIT) and they handle the touch tone recognition and 
tie in to the computer for doing the voice response parts. Perhaps with a 
published API creating the software would be workable. I'd starty by 
tracking down the CIT hardware and existing package solutions first. Then 
you'll have an idea of what is out there before you dive in a write a bunch 
of code that other people have already written a few times over.

-- 

Dan Coutu
Managing Director
Snowy Owl Internet Consulting, LLC
http://www.snowy-owl.com/
Mobile: 603-759-3885
Fax: 603-673-6676