Voice Chatscript

[David Stern <dstern@u.washington.edu>]

Hello,

I'd like my computer to call up one of those automated voice business 
information systems, then execute some transactions by entering my user 
account information and make some selections from the menu.  I'll need 
to execute this task repetitively while I'm away from home.

I tried writing a chatscript, but my modem hangs up, presumably because 
there's no handshake on the other end (I hear the automated voice on 
the other end after answering, then after about 10 seconds my modem 
hangs up).  I see chat is intended for use with pppd, and I didn't see 
any options to disable the handshake expectation.

  ---chatscript---
  ABORT BUSY
  ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
  ""      ATDT777-7777          (phone no.)
  ""      \d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d  (more than enough time to answer)
  ""      \d\d\d\d\d999999#\c   (hear dialogue, enter user info 
                                                     followed by #)
  [..never gets past the initial dialogue, my end hangs up after 10 s..]

So, I read the serial, net-3, isp, and other howto's, but I think all 
the methods employed also presume a handshake (must be implicit, it's 
never discussed).  Then I looked at mgetty and minicom, but didn't see 
any way to disable the handshake expectation there either.  No 
debugging info to see since there's no handshake ..

Reluctantly, I tried my hand at the shell builtin "echo" command, 
but for some reason I don't seem to be able to get the phone number to 
dial, although my modem clicks.  I realize this method is inferior 
because there is no locking of the device, but that's actually less of 
a concern than aborting on no dialtone, because I would like it to be 
able to stop redialing by leaving myself a voicemail which yields a 
stutter dialtone and aborts if I have ABORT "NO DIALTONE" set in my 
chatscript.

  ---commands as they may appear in a shell script file---
  echo "ATDT777-7777" > /dev/modem
  sleep 10
  echo -c "999999#" > /dev/modem
  [..never dials the phone number, just clicks once..]

Finally, I looked in my Linux books, but nothing obvious there either.  
Anyone have a suggestion?  I know I must be missing something..

David







-- 
David
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
                                               dstern@u.washington.edu