Talking caller ID idea, has this been done?

[arbitrageur]

Hello everyone. I have pbxiaf(1.1) using Polycom IP 550 and IP 330 phones, with a linksys SPA-3102 and a voicepulse trunk (asterisk connect, outgoing only right now).

I'm looking at ways to do a call announcement from the phone when a call comes in, just like one of those talking caller ID boxes.

I initially thought I could just get the paging/intercom feature working (using autoanswer) and then doing some sort of text-to-speech through an intercom call while the line is ringing with the new call. Unfortunately it seems that the Page application takes over after placing the call and I can't get anything to play through afterwards (I've tried using Playback and SayDigits). I'm not even sure how this would work if I tried it while a call was coming in for the same line... and the behavior for answering the real call may not be intuitive.

I've also read that some phones support custom ringtones in the form of a URL for a soundfile. In this case a custom recording of SayDigits (or a recording of the caller's name as part of call screening) could be placed where the phone could get the file and then the phone would be signaled to use that recording as the ringtone as part of the call.
I haven't seen anything that indicates the phones I have will accept this.

Another option is to just dump the SayDigits (or recording) out of the asterisk box sound card - but I'm running in a vmware fusion virtual machine which doesn't have sound support. A variation on this idea is to configure one of the asterisk callerid popup programs on a nearby windows box and see if I can get sound out of that.

Has anyone pursued this before? I've searched but I haven't found anything as explicit as I have stated here.

Thanks in advance,
-Greg

 

[tomsyr]

The Grandstream 2000's can announce the caller ID.
I'm not a big fan of the audio quality of the phones themselves though. I have some that are great, and the users wanted to keep them, and others that were very poor.
HTH,
TomSyr

 

[wardmundy]

Take a look at U-Rang II. No reason down the road that we couldn't add voice to the CallerID. I think it might be easier than using intercom on individual phones which tends to be very proprietary to each phone manufacturer.

 

[wifinetguy]

Another option if you're not using a Winbloze machine is to look into the notification application for Linux or Mac OS X over at FreePBX. The URL is: http://freepbx.org/support/document...-caller-id-popup-on-mac-os-x-linux-and-other-

The "saying" part is a little buggy. But your mileage may vary.

Good luck!