William- What Pana PBX do you use, and how exactly is it connected? This does sound cool, and something I might well like to do.
-Chris ----- Original Message ----- From: "William C Biggs, MD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Joseph Schwartz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "kxthelp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 10:58 AM Subject: KX-T: Re: Am I the only one? Joe, We use something like this in our home, and it has been really great to have. We have a homebrew system that integrates with our Panasonic PBX. Here is how we do it: We use a home automation system called ECS. We capture the Caller ID data from a Vive Caller ID to Serial converter, and send it to the ECS computer. ECS looks at the 10 digit number. If we have pre-programmed the number (not hard to do) it announces what we have entered into the computer. So AmarComSvc becomes "Amarillo Commercial Services", and Smith D B becomes "Grandma". The ECS box has a text to speech converter. It calls our to a Panasonic group number from an extension port. This group of phones announces "Grandma is calling,,,,,,Grandma is calling" in the middle of the second ring. We have the Pana system to ring the phones on the 2nd ring. Thus we are getting the Caller ID at about the same time we hear a ring for the first time, sometimes before we hear the first ring. This makes sure we get a CID on all calls for SMDR purposes. If we don't have the number on file, ECS uses the text from the CID string so we might get "Jones Jerry is calling,,,,Jones Jerry is calling", or worst case scenario "A B C Nat L Bank is calling". About 99% of our calls come from 5% of our callers, so we do OK. We also use the ECS system to dump some calls into the "Trash Can Routine". Known call pests such as telemarketers, the credit card agency that pesters our baby sitter (and amazingly calls at our home) , and such are given "special" handling. These calls don't ring through, don't get announced, and get a computer voice message "Our phone system has your number blocked. If you have a need to contact us, please contact us by mail. Thank you. <hangup>" We have had this in place since about 1995 or 1996. At this point we are dependent on it. If the call is for one of the kids, I let them pick it up unless it rings 2 or 3 more times. We don't page bedrooms with CID....just daytime areas like the living room, kitchen garage, etc. So we don't get disturbed if we take a nap during the day. Visitors still give this a "cool" rating. Even though CID has been out for years now, there are very few systems that announce the caller, and almost none that do what ours does. BTW, the Panasonic PBX also has the CID option installed so the info is on the phone display as well in case we are not within earshot of the announcement. Cheers, William Biggs _________________________________________________________________ KX-T Mailing list --- http://kxthelp.com/ Subscription changes: http://kxthelp.com/mailman/listinfo/kxt
