Hi

I've been looking at CallerID in MCE. Notifications of incoming phone calls in Media Center basically.

I've got TapiRex up and running and is working well you can see my review here.

I'm now looking at Vista CallerID but I cannot getting it working, is anyone else using Vista Caller ID ?

I sent the email below to a chap who works for Kentdome, the Vista CallerID developers.

No reply as yet but I only just sent it:

I now have TapiRex fully working with MCE, I had to turn on two settings for
it to start working and displaying the phone numbers of incoming calls, they
were:
Get CallerID in "OnCallerID" and Handle as Data Modem

You can see the TapiRex review on my blog:

http://windowsmediacenter.blogspot.com/2008/09/callerid-review-of-mce-plug-ins.html

Now I have installed your program Vista Caller ID. I am not getting anything
out of it. No notifications are appearing either on the desktop or in MCE.
I installed the desktop software first then I installed the MCE plug-in but
in the Vista Caller ID software it says:

The Vista CallerID Windows Media Center Add-in needs to be installed on your
Windows Media Center

It is installed and MCE when launched shows that Vista CallerID had loaded.

Am I right in thinking there is no MCE UI for Vista CallerID other than the
notifications that pop up? I cannot find anything for it in the MCE Program
Library.

In TapiRex they had a UI in MCE to show you the call history!

Vista CallerID has a green tick against my modem and says: Active.

I think this might still be a modem driver issue passing the CallerID
information from the Tapi driver to your program perhaps?

Also I have not setup any Outlook contacts as yet. Vista CallerID will pull
them in from Outlook if you set that, if you don't it just shows you the
phone
number from the CallerID information in the call is that right?
TapiRex had an in-built database that allowed you to add contact
information, name, phone number and photo etc, that was handy if you didn't
have Outlook on your PC you could still add in the contacts.

It would be a shame if I cannot get Vista CallerID working as I like the
idea of the Use Speech to announce calls and you have a Home Server add-in!

The main differences I can see between the two applications, apart from the obvious that one is not working for me, although I think that is down to my modem driver rather than anything else,

is that TapiRex gives you more control over things to configure settings on the Connection, add MSN's, Pause media playback in MCE when a call comes in, which is a really nice feature not sure if Vista CallerID does this? I can't see a setting for it anyways.

TapiRex also works with Outlook and has its own database for contacts as well, Vista CallerID only works with Outlook contacts as far as I can tell.

There is a cool feature in Vista Caller ID that is announce calls with speech. An american women says " Incoming call from name of caller and their number". They also have a Windows Home Server add-in.

TapiRex has a much better MCE add-in, in the fact that you can see the call history in MCE no such thing with Vista CallerID I don't think.

Both applications have their plus points and nice features, ideally I would want either one of them to have all those features in the one application!

Hi Stuart,

I used to use Tapirex, but haven't got round to completing the setup of my modem yet - the problem will definitely be the driver not passing the right details/interpreting the details appearing.

The standard modem driver doesn't interpret the line details at all, for example, to investigate this issue, you need to set logging on in the modem properties, then try calling using your mobile - see what details appear in the log file - hopefully you'll get some.

In my case, the last time I got it working, I had to add the following lines to my modem driver...

HKR, Responses, "<cr>",   1, 01, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
;00
HKR, Responses, "<lf>",   1, 01, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
;00
HKR, EnableCallerID,1,,"at+vcid=1<cr>"
HKR,,CallerIDPrivate,,P
HKR,,CallerIDOutSide,,O
HKR,,VariableTerminator,,    <cr><lf>

HKR, Responses, "DATE = ", 1,93,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "TIME = ", 1,94,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NMBR = ", 1,95,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NAME = ", 1,96,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "DATE= ", 1,93,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "TIME= ", 1,94,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NMBR= ", 1,95,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NAME= ", 1, 96,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "MESG= ", 1, 97,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "MESG = ", 1,97,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "<cr><lf>DATE=", 1,93,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "<cr><lf>TIME=", 1,94,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "<cr><lf>NMBR=", 1,95,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NAME=", 1, 96,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "MESG=", 1, 97,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "DATE =", 1,93,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "TIME =", 1,94,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NMBR =", 1,95,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "NAME =", 1, 96,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, "MESG =", 1, 97,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

I added each of the above, as there were differences in what appeared in the modem's log file, so it covers pretty much everything that could come in.

The next problem (which is the part I'm struggling with at the moment, due to lack of time) is getting Vista to use the new driver instead of the old one, or one of Windows update etc...

Hope that helps,
Tony

Hey Tony.

I have read something similar to that before, lost the link now have to Google again, but it was about modem drivers not being coded correctly and adding lines in to get CallerID working. I will have to look in to this further. It seems TapiRex with its extra Connection settings can over come these issues, However Vista CallerID doesn't seem to be able to. They have a CallerID repair utility which I image fixes this code but it hasn't seemed to cure the problem on my modem.

Cheers

Thanks Stuart,

let me know how you get on with it, once I've got TV Pack setup done and dusted, so long as no other problems arise (like sound card issues that I've been having recently), I may restart investigating its setup again.

The biggest pain I recall so far is getting the driver recognised, but if callerid repair can handle that, sounds good to me!

Tony

I won't be spending loads of time on this myself either, if I can't get Vista Caller ID working I'll probably purchase TapiRex as I like their MCE plug-in and the fact you can see the call history in MCE. I will have a look in to the driver thing however.

Heres the link to the CallerID Repair utility 

Tony_Park:

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a try - if it saves me hours of work, suits me

Yeah let me know if it fixes your modem driver!

Tony

Here's that article I was talking about: http://www.talkingcallerid.com/ModemDriver.htm it's actually a link from the TapiRex FAQ.

I've not read it all properly yet but it seems like a lot of hassle to fix the driver, maybe its easier than I think?

I've been using YAC for the server and MCE-YAC (http://www.byz.org/~ethanz/mce-yac/) for the client. Doesn't sound like the it has the configuration features of tapiRex, but it is free and dead-simple to setup. Works on x64 too!

See this thread for my adventures in caller id:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/280987.aspx

ACraigL:

I've been using YAC for the server and MCE-YAC (http://www.byz.org/~ethanz/mce-yac/) for the client. Doesn't sound like the it has the configuration features of tapiRex, but it is free and dead-simple to setup. Works on x64 too!

See this thread for my adventures in caller id:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/280987.aspx

 

Thanks for the reply I had not heard of YAC before!

It doesn't support extenders is that right? Which might be a problem for me but thanks for adding your information.

I just double checked on the TapiRex website it says 32 and 64 bit support. Not sure about Vista Caller ID?

YAC as a server will, but the client won't. I have my server on a different machine, so that's not a problem for me. The VMC client I chose (the only one I was able to get working) does NOT support an extender, but that's less of an issue for me.

Frankly, finding a modem that worked under x64 was the biggest challenge. Dealing with software was easy after that.

Hi Stuart,

well, Tapirex is now working for me - took some fiddling - making the changes to drivers that I pointed out earlier, then telling Vista to use the XP versions of the drivers (since I could easily amend the .inf file), however that wasn't enough, tried your called id repair, not sure that made much difference, but then found a trial of Ascendis Caller ID, that also has a repair function that seemed to do the job.

Then in tapirex had to set the modem up as both - get caller id on 'caller-id' and handle as data modem.

Now seems to be working well again... time for a backup me thinks!

Tony

Hi Stuart,

I have the exact same issue.

VistaCallerID does not show notifcations on the PC or Extenders.  It did for the first day or so, but then stopped working and has not started again since.  Prior to VistaCallerID, I was using TapiRex without any problems, except for the one or two crashes when trying to few call history on an Extender.

I actually prefer the intereface of VistaCallerID, but it is simply not reliable in its current state.  If TapiRex updated their interface to a more Vista-ish look I would definitely drop the $30 and switch back.  Until then I am holding out for an updated version of VistaCallerID.  I know Kentdome is working on a .8 version and he originally said it would be out in August.  Hopefully he gets a chance to finish it soon and my caller id notifcations come back.

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