dynamically generating ringtones based on the calling phone number
William Kenworthy
billk at iinet.net.au
Sat Jan 30 13:17:53 CET 2010
I like this idea! - maybe use dtmf tones? Though there are apparently
people who can tell the number from the tones which may be a privacy
issue for some.
BillK
On Sat, 2010-01-30 at 04:10 -0800, Brolin Empey wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> Yes, believe it or not, I am actually posting a message which could be
> considered on-topic! ;)
>
> I have had an idea for years, but have not searched to see if anyone has
> already implemented it.
>
> My idea is to have my cell phone (my FreeRunner, of course, which runs
> QtMoko v14) dynamically generate a ringtone for incoming calls: the
> ringtone would be a monophonic sequence of tones or notes corresponding
> to the sequence of digits in the calling phone number. I think this
> would be cool because I could identify the caller by the ringtone alone:
> I would not need to read the display. The initial version could
> hard-code the mapping of digits to notes; a subsequent version could
> read the mapping from a file, like Keynote does (see below).
>
> Has anyone already implemented this? Which search terms should I use to
> get relevant results from Google Search or maybe Bing?
>
> In 2002, I found an MS-DOS program (I think; or maybe it was for
> Windows?) which read a phone number on the command line and wrote a .wav
> file of the (DTMF?) tones a touch-tone phone uses to dial the phone
> number. I thought it was cool because I could hold a handset’s
> mouthpiece up to the PC speakers (I mean the stereo speakers connected
> to the line-out or speaker-out jack, not the PC speaker inside the case!
> :)), then play the .wav file to dial the phone number. I should try to
> find that program again. I think it was written in Turbo Pascal or
> Borland Pascal, but I forgot if it was open-source; I used the author’s
> binary. I think it was called TCHTONE?
>
> If Timidity++ works on QtMoko, I could try to figure out how to read the
> calling phone number, map its digits to General MIDI notes, then feed
> the MIDI sequence to Timidity++.
>
> I already have experience mapping digits to General MIDI notes in my
> “note” and “Keynote” programs. I wrote both in C while I was learning
> to program (well, I am always learning! :)), but I did not know what I
> was doing then so the source is gross. I probably should have used an
> interpreted language, such as Perl or Python, instead of a compiled
> language, such as C, though. Keynote is for Windows only, but note is
> cross-platform: in 2004 or 2005, I had it running on MS-DOS and
> FreeDOS, Windows 98 Second Edition (AKA Lose98 Second Failure. Yuck!),
> Windows 2000 Professional Edition and/or Windows XP Professional
> Edition, Linux v2.6.x with glibc (multiple distros, but I settled on and
> used Gentoo the most), and FreeBSD v4.10, maybe v5.0 too. I used GNU
> development tools (GCC v3.x, binutils, make, ...?) on all platforms:
> DJGPP on MS-DOS/FreeDOS, MinGW on Windows, and native GCC on Linux +
> FreeBSD. Anyway, note uses ALSA on Linux to play notes with
> Timidity++’s ALSA sequencer interface, so I could probably reuse that
> code on the FreeRunner.
>
> Anyway, enough rambling. How much interest would there be if I cobbled
> together a “ringnote” or dynamic ringtone (“dynringtone”?) program? :)
> I use only QtMoko on my FreeRunner, so I would need people to help
> support other distros.
>
> Brolin
>
> PS: How many Openmoko users make their own ringtones? I used OpenMPT
> on Windows to save one of my favourite chiptunes, Random Voice - Monday
> (MOD format) [1], as a PCM .wav file, then used LAME to encode the .wav
> file as an MPEG audio file so I could use it as my ringtone on my Nokia
> 6103b (Series 40), then my FreeRunner, since neither Series 40 nor
> QtMoko supports module formats as ringtones.
>
> [1] <http://www.fladen.net/>
>
--
William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!
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