Re: [hylafax-users] is this possible.

[George Bell <gbell5@xxxxxxx>]

I think it's possible, but tricky!  I'm currently developing an egetty for 
handling all of voice, fax, and data calls without distinctive ring using the 
"vm" progrm of the vgetty voice extensions.   "vm" acts as a backend while 
the user can customize the front end with a perl script.   The script I have 
is for a standard answering machine:  switch the modem to voice mode, answer 
the telephone, and play a greeting.  If fax or data tones are heard, exit and 
return the call type for further processing.   To implement the features 
you're looking for,  there needs to be some code to detect when a human has 
answered the phone.  A ring is six seconds long(at least in the US) so this 
could be detected as an absence of rings for more than six seconds.  ( This 
also might possibly be detected by a "local phone off-hook"  event but I 
don't know if that would work when the phone is ringing)  At this point,  the 
modem would go "off-hook" and listen for fax or data tones.  If none are 
heard within another timeout (probably shorter than the first) it must have 
been a voice call, so then just go back on-hook and exit.  Otherwise, handle 
the fax or data call.

I'm hoping to release a patch and scripts for the egetty next week if I can 
debug an error in which the serial port has become unusable when control 
returns to hylafax.

George


On Wednesday 13 October 2004 14:47, Chiang Seng Chang wrote:
> Aidan Van Dyk wrote:
> > Depends what features you want...
> >
> > If you want hylafax to *automatically* answer only certain calls, you
> > will need distinctive ring or something like that.
> >
> > If you can live with answering all your calls yourself, and
> > "instructing" hylafax to answer some others, you can use the faxanswer
> > command (or write your one simple programe, etc...) connected to
> > something like a remote, serial switch, web-page, etc) to tell hylafax
> > to answer a line, having it not answer by default (RingsBeforeAnswer: 0).
> >
> > a.
>
> the problem is that i can do that, but not my (slightly
> technology-challenged) other half.
>
> the setup i need is to have voice, fax and answering machine on a shared
> phone line and have them work seamlessly, without the extra cost of
> distinctive rings, etc.
>
> the feature i am looking for (which i believe is on most fax machines)
> is that the fax machine is constantly "listening-in" on the phone line
> and if it detects a fax tone, it takes over.
>
> so that: phone rings, human (or answering machine) picks up, if is fax,
> fax machine take over seamlessly.
>
> unless i overlooked, i think hylafax (and/or my modem) doesn't do that.
>
> wiring some switch to the serial port to execute faxanswer still doesn't
> solve the problem of "no one at home, can't get fax because answering
> machine can't push switch problem".
>
> i figure its probably simplier to go buy a $60 brother fax machine than
> to add vgetty into the mix.
>
> there used to be a product called fax-pal which is neat but the company
> busted, and the modem it uses has some compatibility issues with the one
> my MIL owns.
>
> -cs
>
>
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