Redial: Interactive Telephony : Week 8

Getting outside the phone: Objects (and Displays, next class)

We have talked quite a bit about the power of the voice and our relationship to it as humans. Quite a bit is being done at ITP in the realm of new interfaces and displays which is equally as exciting. In this class we will explore the possibilities for combining these.

Objects

We know that with Asterisk, we have powerful means to access data on the network and the ability to interact with that data. What if we took the next step, using physical objects also connected to the network and utilized the phone as interface to those objects?

This is pretty easily accomplished using Asterisk/AGI/PHP on one side and Arduino/Xport on the other. Combining these two gives us the ability to give voice to our projects or allow them to be controlled with a simple phone call and something like touch tone.

How to

Kate Hartman put together a great page with sample code for how to accomplish this.

Examples

Christin Roman's Telebunny
Botanicalls
something more than: Kam Kam Mobile Alert

Ideas

Home Automation, Alarm System, Monitoring, anything!