Telephone relay

[Westport Lights]

Has anyone thought of or done this?

I was thinking, with so many people carrying cell phones in their car nowadays. Instead of having trigger operated buttons sitting at the curb. Would it be possible to setup a temporary phone line, using some kind of telephone activated relay. Where a person watching the show could call the phone number, press a button, and trigger a song to play?

[LENNY RUEL]

Michael Farney has been working on this. The song would play when the current song was done and then once the requested song played the program would start up again from where it left off. The viewer could access his playlist on his computer by a cell phone from his/her car and make the request. Don't know if it will ever be offered up as a software purchase by him but it's an awesome idea.

Lenny

[Dennis Cherry]

Does it cost 99 cents per song using your telephone?

[Westport Lights]

Dennis Cherry wrote:

Does it cost 99 cents per song using your telephone?

OOoo! I like the idea. Then I could donate that money to a charity! That's probably a lot harder than what I'm thinking though.

[michael.farney]

LENNY RUEL wrote:

Michael Farney has been working on this. The song would play when the current song was done and then once the requested song played the program would start up again from where it left off. The viewer could access his playlist on his computer by a cell phone from his/her car and make the request. Don't know if it will ever be offered up as a software purchase by him but it's an awesome idea.

Lenny

The request line was a smashing success for Halloween. The record was on a Saturday -- 44 calls in one night. That particular night was pretty comical. I was watching as 3 teens on the sidewalk proceeded to have a "phone war." I have my LED sign synced to the system, so it reports when the call line is busy. All 3 of them had their cells out staring at the sign, and they'd race to push the send button as soon as the line was free.

There are a few downsides to the system. First, the system will not queue requests. So if someone requests a song and hangs up, the next caller will override their request if the song hadn't already played. Secondly, without creating a show file for every possible show position, the LOR queue will restart at the top after a request. In my case, I had 10 Halloween songs. The first few would play excessively and the last few would rarely play since LOR always started at the top of the queue after a request. Also, the equipment is expensive -- the entire system will cost you $400-$500 in hardware and software. Now it can be done considerably cheaper if you are willing to play Russian roulette with hardware/software compatibilities. I purchased higher quality equipment with known compatibilities. Finally, it will require batch programming. If you are ok editing batch programming examples for your file paths, then it's pretty simple to setup to work with LOR. I will be adding a detailed tutorial to the website later (after Christmas, sorry) for those wanting to tackle this.

You might also want to note that most people don't use the phone line. However, when a tech savy person comes, I have seen them sit for a half hour or even an hour and continuously request songs. It is not uncommon to open the call log and see a single phone number request 8+ songs over the course of an hour. I posted more typical day for you below. On 10/23, there were 25 requests from 9 unique phone numbers. That means the average person using the phone number is making over 2 requests before leaving. When you boil it down, it's the same couple people using the line repeatedly.

This will give you an idea to how the phone line is used. I have masked the telephone numbers. There were 33 calls on 10/23. Of those 33 calls, 25 made requests before hanging up. I've color coded it so you can see it listed by caller. As you can tell, the display is dominated by a few people interested in using the hot line. The average display viewer is not calling.

2009-10-23,19:02:59,FarneyLights.com,********41, Thriller
2009-10-23,19:18:09,FarneyLights.com,********41, This is Halloween
2009-10-23,19:37:54,FarneyLights.com,********92, Monster Mash
2009-10-23,19:43:45,FarneyLights.com,********92, Fantasmic!
2009-10-23,20:01:59,FarneyLights.com,no data received, Purple People Eater
2009-10-23,20:06:02,FarneyLights.com,********92, Thriller
2009-10-23,20:12:13,FarneyLights.com,********82, This is Halloween
2009-10-23,20:13:50,FarneyLights.com,********92, Ghostbusters
2009-10-23,20:18:06,FarneyLights.com,********82, Monster Mash
2009-10-23,20:24:43,FarneyLights.com,********82, Tubular Bells
2009-10-23,20:27:32,FarneyLights.com,********10, Darkness Descends
2009-10-23,20:29:33,FarneyLights.com,********82, Fantasmic!
2009-10-23,20:31:14,FarneyLights.com,********28, Photo Op
2009-10-23,20:33:18,FarneyLights.com,********28, Photo Op
2009-10-23,20:44:26,FarneyLights.com,********29, Thriller
2009-10-23,20:54:43,FarneyLights.com,********29, This is Halloween
2009-10-23,20:56:38,FarneyLights.com,********29, Monster Mash
2009-10-23,21:03:24,FarneyLights.com,********16, Footsteps in the Dust
2009-10-23,21:09:21,FarneyLights.com,********28, Monster Mash
2009-10-23,21:10:24,FarneyLights.com,********12, This is Halloween
2009-10-23,21:12:25,FarneyLights.com,********28, Monster Mash
2009-10-23,21:16:54,FarneyLights.com,********28, Purple People Eater
2009-10-23,21:27:10,FarneyLights.com,********38, Tubular Bells
2009-10-23,21:35:29,FarneyLights.com,no data received, Footsteps in the Dust
2009-10-23,21:37:08,FarneyLights.com,********38, Fantasmic!

[Westport Lights]

Gosh, I was thinking something like this:

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/tele/ck603.htm

You could maybe hook it up to the trigger inputs on a director card or something.

You went way above and beyond how I was thinking it would work. Your way is much, much better though.

[michael.farney]

Westport Lights wrote:

Gosh, I was thinking something like this:

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/tele/ck603.htm

You could maybe hook it up to the trigger inputs on a director card or something.

You went way above and beyond how I was thinking it would work. Your way is much, much better though.

Your method will work with trigger inputs. However, you would not be able to give the user a phone menu.

Look at it as an investment. I can now control everything about the display with a phone call -- enable/disable LOR shows, kill/start programs like zara radio, change the contents of the LED sign, even reboot the PC. Plus, the obvious advantage of having a request line for viewers. I am still tweaking the system and working on a way to not lose the show position, so it doesn't restart the queue after every request.

[tomskillman]

Michael's use got me thinking of the same thing. I was going to use a text-messaging service called TextMarks, but realized that some people won't text mesage ( and the interface was rather klunky). I inquired about how Michael was using the phone. He pointed me toward a software product called IVM (http://www.nch.com.au/ivm/index.html) which isn't exactly cheap, but for what it does it's nice. There are various prices depending on how much functionality you need. There is also a demo you can play with. I am using it with a VOIP connection from callcentric (http://callcentric.com). Basic Callcentric service is free and you can call into your IVM free using Callcentric's VOIP client. For a small fee (about $3-$5 a month), you get a local telephone number assigned to your account. The bonus to using VOIP serivce from Callcentric is you actually get 2 lines for WAY less than you would spend on a standard phone line. I've found no problems using this setup so far. The menus let you do things like set variables to a value from the keypad. This variable can then be sent to a batch file. I have set up a batch file that then appends the request to a text file. There is another batch file that runs as the windows command before each sequence which checks the queue and reschedules the show. I found that changing out the show file did not work, so my batch file re-writes the schedule file instead.
Michael mentions that the same songs from the full show keep playing because of requests. I originally set the full show to random, but found that some sequences were favored over others, so I used a random number generator to choose a sequence to play if the queue is empty.

I realize this may be confusing, but it's hard to describe. I'd be happy to share some of my scripts if there is interest. Also, if you want to see how the phone system sounds, feel free to call my system. It's running now, although there are no lights or controllers hooked up. Here's the info you need if you want to call in....


Phone Number: (314) 244-3798

The phone system also lets you vote for your favorite songs. Feel free to vote. Vote tallys appear on my website at:

http://www.lavernelllights.info/poll/results.php?pollid=1.


Please don't vote after Thanksgiving, as I'd like an accurate vote! Between now and Thanksgiving, you can vote all you want, though.


Let me know if there are any further questions.

[michael.farney]

Tom,

Here's a little more info to how I do mine. At the beginning of the call, I write out to a log file the telephone information. That way, I can tell every time a call is answered. Then, IVM checks the current time of day. If it is not valid show hours, it kicks the caller to an "out of hours" message. If it is 5-10pm, it then goes into the main menu. All the songs are listed on the main menu. When the caller chooses a song, IVM uses the executable process to launch a batch file which overwrites the show file. In addition, it writes the request to another log (so I can see what requests were made when.) At this point, it lets the user hang up allows them to stay on hold until their song plays.

I am going to check out call centric. It seems it will be much cheaper than I am doing now.

Tom, if you want help getting the IVM to work using show files instead of the scheduler, let me know. Doing show files are much cleaner than doing the scheduler.

A note about random: I don't know if LOR changed the algorithm recently, but when I played around with random in 2007, each day had its own seed. But if you restarted the show multiple times in the same day, it would reuse the same seed. Basically, that means that if the show restarted at 5pm, 7pm and 9pm, it would play the same songs in the same order as the last restart. So it doesn't do a good job at random at all.

Finally, I'd like to see your scripts for this. Perhaps it will give me a better idea how to manage my system. If I understand you correctly, you have basically created your own mechanism to do random for the display? It will choose its own random songs unless there is a reuqest sitting in the queue? The best I can figure out (using my method) is to make a show for every possible position we could be in the queue, and then use that show file to play the request. That would effectively jump the queue to the natural location of that song and end the problem i have of songs getting "overplay."

[tomskillman]

Michael,

I'll work up a web page with the info as time permits. I'd like to lay out the flow of things in addition to linking the scripts. For the random number generation, I use PHP. Actually most of the work is done in PHP - the batch file is called from LOR to have PHP check the queue and also send the song information to an LED sign. This could all be done in IVM directly, but I chose to not have multiple executables in IVM.
I'll let you know when I have the flow laid out - possibly later today...

[hbomb341]

Tom that is AWESOME - looks like a feature I will be putting into place for 2010.

Harrison

[tomskillman]

OK so here's what I've put together. I"m sure there's more I forgot, so if anyone finds a hole in my information, let me know. I'll try to go through it again later to be sure I didn't leave something out!

http://www.lavernelllights.info/telephone/

[michael.farney]

tomskillman wrote:

Michael,

I'll work up a web page with the info as time permits. I'd like to lay out the flow of things in addition to linking the scripts. For the random number generation, I use PHP. Actually most of the work is done in PHP - the batch file is called from LOR to have PHP check the queue and also send the song information to an LED sign. This could all be done in IVM directly, but I chose to not have multiple executables in IVM.
I'll let you know when I have the flow laid out - possibly later today...

Thanks Tom! I did not know I could move back and forth in PHP programming with batch files. This opens up a whole new can of worms. Can you use php variables and pass them back to IVM? If so, then IVM could announce the queue and even tell the caller exactly how long before their request will play. I already have IVM speaking variables (song number) for Christmas. It would be pretty cool if it could give the actual wait time.

[tomskillman]

I'm not sure if you can pass PHP variables back to IVM or not. Haven't tried that, but I might experiment with that....would be nice to tell the caller how many sequences were ahead of theirs....I'm also thinking about implementing some kind of limits to the size of the queue....but for now, Im happy with the way it's working....

[tomskillman]

After playing with IVM today, I figured out how to pass a variable back from your script to send information back. It's really very simple. You just output from your script variable=value....

For instance, my requestit.bat file now calls a php script after it logs the request. The PHP script reads the contents of the queue file (queue.txt) into an array and checks the number of elements in the array. Then, it has one print statement:


print "position=".$numelements;


This sends back to IVM a variable position with the number of elements in the array (which is equivalent to the number of request in the queue). The only other trick to this is the IVM menu that calls the batch file must have the "Is IVM Plugin Process" checked in the Run EXE Settings box.

[Mark Steele]

I've been out of the LOR loop for over a year now due to lack of time and resources. But I'm catching up on this forum and just came across this post. I did something like this back in 2007 before there was any interactive function in the LOR hardware/software. I manipulated the schedule files to play a desired sequence and utilized the NCH software to allow viewers to start individual songs by telephone. Here is a link to that thread:
http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum72/15756.html
The first post describes the schedule files and telephone interface is down toward the bottom as I added this a few weeks later. I was able to queue requests by appending the new requests to the text file that I read to create the current schedule file.
I just thought I'd throw this out there, although some of the functionality is now obsolete with the inclusion of the interactive features now available in LOR.

Mark

[clueless]

I just wanted to pass along, there is an open source IVR called CallButler that will do all the same stuff as the one talked about here and works great with CallCentric. I found it on one of my many hunts for software.

http://www.codeplex.com/callbutler

Ryan

[stanward]

WOW, all of this is so awesome! I never thought this would be possible!

Time to start preparing for the 2010 Christmas show!