dynamically generating ringtones based on the calling phone number

[Nelson Castillo]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 7:10 AM, Brolin Empey <brolin at brolin.be> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> Yes, believe it or not, I am actually posting a message which could be
> considered on-topic! ;)

A small step for a man :-P

> 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?

We also had the Idea but I never worked on it. The idea came from a
Friend (Marlon) after I explained him how this program worked:

http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/arhuaco/listen-to-the-collatz-conjecture

His idea was that you can generate some musical tone after a phone
number. His idea was not to have a direct mapping from the number to
some kind of music but to map the calling number to unique melody that
you could learn to map to persons with time (I guess you would learn
the numbers that call you often rather  fast).

This is a nice approach because from the number you could:

- Select an instrument from a pool
- Select the timings
- And the melody

> 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 used songwrite because it was easier for me to generate notes this
way. But I guess that generating a midi is the right way to go.

> 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.

Not for ringtones but I've used LAME also to encode the files I
generated (-h -V2 -b32 -mj -q1
).

http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/mp3-encode

Nelson.-