Recognizing touch tones

bscott at ntisys.com bscott at ntisys.com
Sun Feb 16 10:19:04 EST 2003


On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, at 6:18pm, bobbell at zk3.dec.com wrote:
> Someone has approached me about writing some software that would basically
> provide a phone menu.

  Buzzwords for that sort of thing are "auto attendant", "automatic voice
response", "interactive voice response", and "computer telephony
integration".  AA and AVR are typically less sophisticated, read-only menus
and call directors, while IVR lets you do things like enter a customer ID
and get info about your account, and CTI means a caller's data will appear
on an operator's computer screen.

> It would recognize touch tones (phone button presses) ...

  The technical term is "DTMF decoding" (DTMF = Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency).

> Any idea what it would take to accomplish this?

  Many off-the-shell modems sold these days can do voice recording and
playback.  Even my external RS-232 modem claims to be able to do it.  So I
presume there is some kind of semi-standard extension to the Hayes ("AT")  
command set that will enable such behavior, even over a standard serial
line.

  There are packages for Linux that claim to turn your PC into an answering
machine.  I presume such software could be extended to do what you want.  
For example, on my Red Hat 7.3 home system (where I am typing from), RPM
says the "mgetty-voice" package provides "the vgetty system, which enables
mgetty and your modem to support voice capabilities".

  A Google search for "linux telephony" yields many promising links, and
even some relevant adverts.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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