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COMCALL.EXE V1.0 COPYRIGHT(C) 1991/1992 Clive Jones, 111 Deer Park Gdns, Mitcham, Surrey ENGLAND CR4 4DX. ESPA REGISTERED 1991/1992 (10012AS1/0192) COMCALL is distributed under the SHAREWARE principles. The Author reserves all COPYRIGHTS (C) to the program and associated documentation. In using this program you agree to the terms that NO LIABILITY OF ANY KIND EITHER THROUGH DIRECT USAGE OR INDIRECT USAGE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS PROGRAM OR FAILURE IN THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE AS DESCRIBED WILL BE PAYABLE OR DUE BY THE AUTHOR. You are granted a limited licence to use this program for a limited period of 30 days for evaluation purposes only. If you intend to use this program beyond the trial period you are requested to register your copy. Registered copies will receive postal support (telephone support provided where possible) and upgrade options as and when available. Failure to register your copy may result in further development into this and other packages not being under taken by the author as a result of financial restraints. Don't be a contributory factor to the demise of SHAREWARE. Assist the authors who have spent considerable time and effort by registering your SHAREWARE packages. --------------------- If you have a telephone, a Hayes command set modem and an IBM or compatible running under DOS or Windows, then COMCALL may be of some use. COMCALL is a package that is designed to monitor your phone line in your absence. It will either call you at ANY other phone location to advise you when the pre-defined trigger is met or execute a command to start some alternative action. Comcall will work with many existing telecommunications hardware devices such as existing phones, extensions, answerphones etc. No special hardware is required at the recipient end of the triggered call. Any phone that may be directly dialled is sufficient. Version one of Comcall is distributed under the Shareware principles. Already a number of improvements are planned and will be introduced in subsequent versions. Future versions may only be obtainable by users already registered under the Shareware release of version 1. The trigger for COMCALL is a range of counts of incoming rings to your telephone. You define this upon starting COMCALL and is totally variable. Such as one (and only one) ring being received (eg like a RINGBACK set up) or maybe between 2 and 4 rings (your answer phone would have received a message), or maybe all rings eg 1 - 999 (999 being the COMCALL limit). Only consecutive rings from one call are counted. If the trigger condition is not met then the ring count will be reset and Comcall will await for subsequent calls. All incoming rings are logged to a file called CALLRING.DTL for later inspection if required. Useful if you've been out and would like to see how many calls you missed. EXAMPLE USAGES: 1. A family member may be ill in hospital or your wife may have been taken into maternity as her babies due date nears. You have an answer phone and you have to go out on some urgent business. You are fearful that you may receive that all important call whilst you are out. The answer phone will take the message but you won't know of this until you next return home or until you phone up and interrogate your answer phone next (assuming you have a remote access answer phone). Provided you either have a radio pager or know the telephone number of the person whom you are visiting worry no further. Simply invoke COMCALL to monitor your line, giving it the number of the person whom you are visiting (or the radio pager number). Go on out about your business and if a message comes in, then you will be automatically advised. 2. You are in the office late on a Friday evening. You still haven't met that all important deadline for your project and you really should come in over the weekend to finish of that draft overview. But your office is over 30 miles away. You are not permitted to take disks out of the office and no inward external network access exist into your PC system for security reasons. Your office PC does however have a modem for outgoing data transfer and you have a PC, Modem and Communications Software at home. Simply invoke your copy of COMCALL to trigger after say just one (and only one) ring of your office telephone. When this trigger is met you want it to start your comms package that has been set to autodial your home phone number. You can then go home in the knowledge that you do not have to drive all the way in tomorrow and can work from home. All that is required the next day is for you to call your office phone, hang up after just one ring, set your PC, Modem and Comms package to autoanswer data mode and then wait for the return call from your office PC. You should be confident that no one else will ring your office phone just once and then hang up. Even if then did it would be of little consequence as you would get an a simple call from your works PC which you could then just hang up on. Provided you have set up the triggering system correctly, your works PC would then resume waiting for another single ring. (See USING below). SET UP/ INSTALLATION. COMCALL.EXE should be ideally placed in one of your directories named within your PATH statement and IN the directory of the .BAT file or program/command that you wish it to invoke upon being triggered by the ring count (unless you intend for COMCALL to just call another phone number, in which case any directory/location would be sufficient). Comcall consists of three files. COMCALL.EXE the executable file, COMDO.COM which is used to execute the desired commands/files and Comcall.DOC - this manual. Once Comcall has been run once a further new file will be automatically created called CALLRING.DTL. This file is used to hold details of COMCALLs actions (rings received, actions taken etc). This file is appended to upon further usage of Comcall and should therefore be periodically monitored and deleted as necessary. Prior to using COMCALL you must have a MODEM (Hayes Command Set) connected to the specified COM port. The modem must be powered on prior to the invoking of COMCALL. COMMANDS. COMCALL is purely command line driven. Syntax:- COMCALL <Port> <X> <Y> <F> <ACTNUM> [p1] [p2] [p3] [p4] Where Port : Is the Number of the COM Port Number Your Modem is connected to eg 1 or 2 or 3 etc X : Is the lower ring count Y : Is the higher ring count F : Use T for Telephone Tone Dialling Action OR P for Telephone Pulse Dialling OR E for a Command Action. ACTNUM : Is the Telephone Number To Call (<F> set to T or P) OR a DOS/COMMAND action (<F> set to E). [p1] .. [[p4] : Up to four parameters that may be passed to the command/file named in <ACTNUM> if <F> is an 'E' option (execute command). NOTE: Tel Nos. should have no spaces or hyphen separators. USAGE. The ring counts (lower/upper) should be set to the number of FULL RINGS that you wish COMCALL to trigger an action upon receipt of. These values may be identical so as to stipulate an exact number of RINGS to trigger. The minimum number of rings that may be specified is 1. The maximum upper level is 999 RINGS. For ranges of RING COUNTS the values are considered to be inclusive eg COMCALL 2 1 2 E echo hello (Modem connected to COM2 with 1 to 2 rings (inclusive) being the trigger, E(xecute) the command 'echo hello' upon the trigger being set. The <F> parameter should be set according to what the required trigger action should be eg 'T' a telephone advisory call should be made using TONE signalling to the number defined in <ACTNUM>. 'P' - same as for the 'T' option above except using PULSE dialling methods. 'E' if there is a command to be EXECUTED instead of an advisory call. In using the 'E' option, any dos command or program filename may be called (even a call to a .BAT file if required), together with any parameters required by that called program (there is a upper limit of 4 parameters that may be passed with this option). eg you could use the following option to invoke COMCALL COMCALL 2 1 1 E DIR /W This will simply monitor the phone line through the modem connected on COM 2. If a single ring (and only one ring (ie upper ring count level set to the same as the lower level ring count eg 1)) then an action of EXECUTE will be made. The execute action being the dos command DIR /W (note one parameter supplied to the dos command - that of the /W for a WIDE directory listing). COMCALL automatically issues the commands ATV1S0=0 at start up so as to place the modem in verbose messaging, never auto-answer mode. For Release 2 of COMCALL this will be a parameter that will be user definable. To enable some form of indication at the recipient end of the named telephone number this program issues a reverse ringback command signal to your modem when making an advisory call. If you are unsure about reverse dialling, do not worry too much, it basically means that the person answering the advisory call will hear DATA TONES. Thus implying that an advisory call is in progress. Without the reverse dialling mode, the person answering the call would hear nothing and may assume that a telecommunications error had occurred. Not all modems may support the ringback option, but the ones that do usually have a command sequence of /R to invoke this option (consult your modem manual for further reference). COMCALL will reissue a call if the BUSY tone is detected upon making an advisory call. You will notice that delays are incorporated into a number of the functions of COMCALL. These delays are currently pre-set (Again Release 2 will see user definable parameters in place) and are present to ensure that sufficient delay periods exists when modem functions are performed. For example the delay count prior to initiating the execution or advisory message is in place so as to ensure that any incoming messages should have completed (eg an answerphone) prior to COMCALL making the outgoing advisory call (after all you would be sharing the same telephone line). If the telephone is being used by another person locally after a triggering condition has been met, and the trigger action is an outgoing advisory call, then COMCALL will fail to complete the advisory call. To aid in the advising of local personnel that COMCALL is about to trigger an advisory call or action, the delay period incorporates a tone generation to indicate the pending action. Local personnel should be advised that they must complete any usage of that phone line that COMCALL is utilising (eg that of your modem line) prior to completion of this delay period. Some difficulty in the anticipated functioning of COMCALL may occur if another incoming ring is made at the same instant in time when COMCALL issues an advisory call command. However, the instances when this occurs should be extremely few in view of the small timeslot window when such conditions may occur. EXAMPLES. For the example one mentioned earlier, assuming your business partners telephone number is 230 0012, your modem is connected to COM2 and your telephone utilises the tone dialling method, then use the following command to invoke comcall COMCALL 2 1 999 T 2300012 (See how the range may be used to select a full range of rings eg 1 to 999 so as to advise you of every call - this will trigger an action call even though your phone may have been answered after say 2 or 4 rings - eg if you have an answer phone.) Each time that someone calls your home phone number you will receive an advice call to indicate such at the number 230 0012. For example two above then, assuming your modem is connected to your PC's Com3 port and the .BAT file to invoke your callback comms package is called PHONEME.BAT then the command would be COMCALL 3 1 1 E PHONEME (Again note how the ring count range in this example is set to an individual ring count of 1 by use of the same digits for the ring range parameters eg 1 1. - note that in this case a file called phoneme.bat would need to be in the same directory as COMCALL.) For COMCALL to work your PC and Modem must be left on. Any power loss to your system will result in the loss of the COMCALL monitoring. To ensure against power glitches you could copy the COMCALL command to the last line of your autoexec.bat file so that should the power fail and then be restored then the PC would reboot and re-execute the COMCALL command. COMCALL liaises with your modem. You should use a HAYES compatible MODEM and command set. COMCALL requires that verbose commands are returned from your modem (not digit values) and that the modem is set to never answer. These can usually be set using the AT(tention) commands as defined for your modem once COMCALL has been invoked. The most commonly used AT commands within COMCALL is to set your modem to never answer (S0=0) and verbose listing (word messages). This is automatically sent within the initialisation process of COMCALL when invoked. If however your modem does not appear to react to this initialisation then you may have to enter the command directly yourself at the terminal mode session (consult your modem manual for further details for verbose messaging). eg Once you have invoked COMCALL with the correct parameters you will be in a terminal session with your modem. So if the AT (attention) commands to set your modem is say ATV1S4=0 then enter that directly at the terminal screen. You should then see the modems response of OK. If this does not occur then you should check your modem and COM port. Once you have set the modems parameters then try typing in a Capitalised RING at the terminal screen. You should see the response of the time of the ring and the ring count. If further rings are entered in quick succession you should see the ring count increment. (Beware not to enter the same number of rings as defined for your trigger otherwise the trigger will occur at this test stage.) If there are delays of over 10 seconds between the last and the next ring then the ring count will be seen to revert back to one (assumes a new call). If you utilise the .BAT file execution option, then COMCALL may or may not be resumed upon completion of this .BAT file depending upon the utilities called (memory space etc). Test your set ups prior to depending upon them. If COMCALL does not resume then try setting up the BAT file to re-invoke it at the end of your .BAT files run. Alternatively add the COMCALL invocation commands to your autoexec.bat file and initialise a reboot upon completion of your executed .BAT file. (There are plenty of software reboot programs around, if you have any difficulty in obtaining one of these then I would be delighted to supply details). Say that you have a comms package that you wish to invoke upon a selected ring count condition being met. Lets say your comms package is called compac. Your compac program allows for the creation of script files. You have created a script file that will result in a comms link being automatically set up when the script is invoked. The compac package is assumed to allow you to invoke compac and the script directly from the dos command line eg if the script is called ringoff.scr - compac allows you to invoke it and the ringoff.scr by using the command compac ringoff.scr You want this comms package to be run every time that comcall detects only one ring (one and only one rings). We will also assume that your modem is connected to your COM port 2. Additionally, lets also assume that your comms package compac is in a directory called c:\comms and that your COMCALL package is in a directory called c:\comcall. You should create a .bat file (consult your dos manual for help regarding batch files) - lets call it doit.bat - containing something like:- cd c:\comms compac ringoff.scr cd c:\comcall comcall 2 1 1 e doit Save this .bat file to the directory from where you call comcall from (eg the c:\comcall directory in this example). Now, having ensured your modem is connected and powered on (don't worry about this if you have an internal modem) then invoke comcall with your required parameters to execute the doit.bat file if the ring trigger condition is met using the command comcall 2 1 1 e doit Now whenever the trigger condition is met (eg one ring only received) then after the delay period the doit.bat file will be executed. The bat file results in the changing of the directory to c:\comms and then the invoking of your compac package with the script function of ringoff.scr. Your comms package (compac) will then perform the function that you defined in the script file. The last command of this script file should be to drop back out to the DOS prompt from the comms package. Thus the BAT file will be resumed and the next line executed eg CD c:\comcall before finally re-invoking comcall with the required parameters so as to restart comcall as per the initial invocation. Note that this method of utilising bat files to re-invoke comcall will not work with the NON REGISTERED Shareware version due to the opening screen preventing auto entry. Occasionally you should browse the CALLRING.DTL file that is created automatically by COMCALL. This file contains all of the rings and the times that they were logged whilst COMCALL was active. This file will continue to grow until such times that you delete it. Once deleted a new copy will be started the next time you use COMCALL and a RING is detected. COMCALL has primarily be developed and tested in the UK. Some increase in the RINGING tone received whilst COMCALL and the Modem were active have been reported. This should not be a cause for concern. In theory the package should work as equally well on a multitude of telecommunications networks. We have (as of the current date) not received any reports of COMCALL failing to work on any given network. When COMCALL initiates an advisory call, the response messages from that call are monitored. If a BUSY message is received then the call will be retried after a short delay. In both EXECUTE and ADVISORY CALL modes, a delay from the time when the trigger ring receipt was received and the trigger function operates exists. This is via a counter level being incremented and displayed upon the terminal screen. If you wish to cancel the trigger function and resume RING monitoring, then the ENTER key may be pressed during this delay period (eg you may have answered your phone locally and you do not wish for the advisory call to progress to completion). To quit out of COMCALL use the combined keystrokes of ALT X. (Some limited help may be obtained by using the combined keystrokes of ALT H). For RELEASE 2 of COMCALL it is intended to include multiple function selections. This will allow you to select a number of different actions depending upon the number of rings received. REGISTRATION ENQUIRIES MAY BE MADE DIRECT TO THE AUTHOR AT THE ADDRESS BELOW OR VIA COMPUSERVE TO ID 100014,3141. If you found this package to be of some use and would like to continue to use it beyond the evaluation period of 30 days then remit your payment and details to the following address:- Clive Jones 111 Deer Park Gardens Mitcham Surrey CR4 4DX Registration entitles you to support of the package (postal/electronic mail plus telephone where possible). As a registered user you will also be advised of upgrades as and when they become available. The suggested minimum registrational contribution is 5 UK Pounds Sterling or 8.00 US Dollars. This entitles you to a continuation in the licence to usage beyond the 30 day trial period and package support. Additionally for another 3 Pounds UK Sterling (8 US Dollars) you may register to receive the latest non-shareware version of COMCALL (no opening screen interaction required). Please state the preferred disk size/format for this option and don't forget to include your full name and postal address. We apologise for the variance between the UK and US costs for disk supply. This arises out of the increased postal charges from the UK to the US. COMCALL.EXE source code is available for sale. Contact the author for further details. ENHANCEMENTS. The COMCALL package is currently distributed in a basic pre-set form. Upon proof of sufficient interest in the program (eg registrations/enquiries) then the author pledges to provide further releases of improved versions. There are a number of areas in which such improvements would be beneficial such as in greater configurability, better interfacing etc. Your registration contributions will ensure that such improvements see the light of day. Such later releases may only be available to currently registered users. ----------------end-of-author's-documentation--------------- Software Library Information: This disk copy provided as a service of Public (software) Library We are not the authors of this program, nor are we associated with the author in any way other than as a distributor of the program in accordance with the author's terms of distribution. Please direct shareware payments and specific questions about this program to the author of the program, whose name appears elsewhere in this documentation. If you have trouble getting in touch with the author, we will do whatever we can to help you with your questions. All programs have been tested and do run. To report problems, please use the form that is in the file PROBLEM.DOC on many of our disks or in other written for- mat with screen printouts, if possible. PsL cannot debug pro- programs over the telephone, though we can answer questions. 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