Comments on: Follow-Me Phoning: Implementing Bluetooth Proximity Detection with Asterisk, Part I

By: Latia Bapties

Latia Bapties — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:37:51 +0000

Bluetooth headsets are very convenient too use since they do not use clumsy wiring.

By: Maricela Ylonen

Maricela Ylonen — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:18:33 +0000

Thank you for this blog article.In fact looking forward to reading more. Great.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:43:40 +0000

Mary, a traditional telphone network takes any touch tones it hears and uses them just as if you dialed a number on the keypad. So if you made a recording of the sound of dialing your home phone number and then you played the recording back on a public pay phone, the phone would dial the number. That is not always true or obvious with VOIP/SIP phones because it depends on a lot of other variables how they behave.

My guess is that the woman you saw has a device that plays the touch tones. She could have an address book with phone numbers in it and just press the "John Doe" button to have it make the pay phone call John Doe. She was probably recording touch tones too. Maybe from some voicemail service that tells her who called by playing back the touchtone version of the number in the caller id of the voice mail message.

By: Mary Hartman

Mary Hartman — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:31:10 +0000

I watched as a woman took what I was told was a Bluetooth device up to a payphone where I had just placed some calls. She punched some numbers into the device and then punched some numbers into the phone. She then held the phone receiver and the device together, as if the device was recording something. Do you have any idea what it was and what she was doing? It looked like the cartoon drawing at the top of this site, but black.

By: Fadi

Fadi — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:22:10 +0000

I must realize a wireless connection between a GSM’s phone and asterisk via WLAN or Bluetooth…
In other words, a mobile(GSM phone) as of its entry in the zone of cover of my Wlan or the zone of cover of my Bluetooth, whitch is connected to Asterisk, must be able to receive and emit Voip calls.(using a GSM cell phone like an Asterisk’s endpoint).
Between my GSM cell phone and Asterisk, all calls must be transmit over WLAN or Bluetooth.
for this i must program the mobile(GSM cell phone) so that it detects the Wlan or Blutooth network and to be recorded on asterisk to receive calls from asterisk and via wlan/bluetooth detected.
do you have an idea how I must proceed to achieve this goal?
Asterisk — WLAN or Bluetooth —- GSM Phone ——> other IP Phone

By: John Dias

John Dias — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:02:41 +0000

I have answered my own question. You can detect the proximity of any active Bluetooth device if you have a Series 60 cell phone (see s60.com for examples), and you install a program called Bluetracker (available for $5.50 at Handango.com):

http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=308&jid=2CB3E77X5A2B36A8B53C542D9E27DFC8&platformId=4&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=176674

John Dias
Founder, DontMakeHerMad.com
http://www.dontmakehermad.com/

"Hell hath no fury like a false allegation"

By: John Dias

John Dias — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:50:26 +0000

I have a use for proximity detection that goes beyond mere household convenience, and is instead related to safety and security. I have read about how some women will file a restraining order against a man, making him subject to arrest if he goes near her. But then, to punish the man (who may very well be complying with the order), the woman seeks him out (stalks him) and finds him in a place she expects him to be (like a supermarket), keeps nearby but out of his sight, and then uses her cell phone to call the police and accuse the poor guy of violating his restraining order to keep away from her. She seeks him out, then acts like she's a victim of his "alleged" stalking. A law-abiding man would honor the restraining order and should not be punished for doing so; a crazed lunatic would violate his restraining order anyway, which makes you wonder how effective restraining orders are against truly threatening people. If only the poor guy could utilize Bluetooth proximity detection to see if the woman who is accusing him is in range. If his cell phone alerts him "she's near by! Get the hell out of here!" then he can leave before he is falsely accused of violating his "no contact" order. Alternatively, proximity detection could be useful for a woman who legitimately fears another person stalking her and simply wants to escape him. Could Bluetooth proximity technology be useful for these purposes? How could it be implemented without carrying a full-on PC computer around with you? Assuming both the stalker and the stalked both have Bluetooth turned on in their cell phones, could this work?

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:28:09 +0000

As far as the bluetooth unit having to be 30 some-odd feed from the user and it taking up a significant amount of cpu/memory to run that script:

Don’t they make a usb bluetooth adapter that has an antennae on a cord rather then just jutting out the back of the pc’s usb port? There are a few wireless cards like this, where it either has a hardwired or removable coax cord to the antennae. If you could get a bluetooth device to attach to the asterisk box that had this, you could probably just run the line over cat 5 and put the ant right near where the users are in their little cube farm or what have you. So, in installations where the pbx is down in the basement or in a server room or telco room, this would solve that problem. Can that be done?

A lot of us are doing commercial asterisk installs on glorified servers; ie desktops that are quite fast and have more power and memory then you technically need for asterisk. The reason is, you’re selling a new phone system so you can’t really show up with your 486 dx4 from college. But, doing it at home on clunker hardware for an enthusiast would probably require the second box. But, in a comemrcial environment, I’d argue having one box do it would be fine.

By: clint

clint — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:57:49 +0000

You could always use a Single Port USB wall plate. This could be mounted to your ceiling around the office entry with a USB extension back to your server room.

They sell a USB wall plate for $10 at: http://www.datapro.net/products/70200.html

By: Norm

Norm — Wed, 17 May 2006 17:55:48 +0000

re: you can?��Ǩ�Ѣt have your Asterisk@Home box shoved in a closet in the basement

Don’t be too worried if your server has to be tucked beneath a desk, or between a couple of filing cabinets. Just use a 6 or 12 foot USB extension cable, and stick the USB Bluetooth adapter on the end of it. Then you can position the adapter in a more optimum location where it has a better chance of establish a "line-of-sight". Bluetooth operates in same 2.4GHZ "junk band" as WiFi, some cordless phones, etc, so good antenna position will help tremendously with range and performance.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 01 May 2006 22:07:23 +0000

I am using Bluetooth Remote Control at Bluetooth Shareware. It has a load of features but not proximity but that shall be added in the next release according to the developers!

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 01 May 2006 21:40:18 +0000

Salling is great but you should try Bluetooth Remote Control which has the same features at a much lower price.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:56:27 +0000

I am new to this. Do you have any information on how to set up an asterisk Server and where do I get the software. [WM: Go here to download the software and read our Newbie's Guide on installing it.]

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:46:26 +0000

You can get a box from Aleen Tech that plugs into an analog port off of a standard PBX. The box requires a SIM chip from Cingular or Sprint so you’d need a 2nd account, but you can program any PBX to dial out over the box by setting it up as a line or extension. The box is only $300 but are you saving enough on your monthlies? Cingular’s family plan has a second account for $6.95 in CA, so its pretty cheap if you only talk nights and weekends.

By: JPE

JPE — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:08:08 +0000

Check this out. I have it making calls out over asterisk very basically. Cant get the inbound working though..... http ://www.thetechguide.com/howto/asterisk/chanbluetooth.html J.P.

By: pvh

pvh — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:09:50 +0000

Is there any way to use the cell phone as a trunk line to Asterisk? This way nights and weekends are free as are cell-to-cell calls. [WM: Take a look at Dock-n-Talk. We haven't tried it personally, but it seems to do what you want when used in conjunction with a Sipura ATA.]

By: Collin Mulliner

Collin Mulliner — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:19:45 +0000

This sounds cool, so somebody figured out howto get something like my star-com-system (http://www.mulliner.org/collin/startrekcom.php) to work 🙂

By: Erik Pettersson

Erik Pettersson — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:13:19 +0000

Ok, this idea is cool. But.

Check out http://www.plutohome.com which does this and aaaaaalot of more stuff (advanced tv-functionality, asterisk, bluetooth, cellphone interaction, control your house and some security control systems. Check it out already!!!)
Also under a semi-free license!

It’s really worth checking out, I don’t know how DIY it is tho’

By: Blair

Blair — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 02:43:30 +0000

I just got a new in box Plantronics m3000 on Ebay for $21.99.
I am not up to speed for this tutorial, but I needed to get a bluetooth headset for my new Crackberry 7250.

My asterisk server will probably end up in a closet in my basement since that is where all the Cat 5e terminates. (and the server sounds like a mac truck idling)

I am in the process of setting up a sff touchscreen pc for my kitchen running debian 3.1.(for x-10 and misterhouse) Could I use this pc for my bluetooth proximity detector?
Also, are there any security concerns with implementing bluetooth into a home Lan?

Thanks for all the great info, and keep up the good work.

Regards,
Blair

[WM: Go ahead and follow along with us with an install on the machine destined for your basement closet. You may be surprised by the range of the Bluetooth devices. I was. I haven’t played with Debian 3.1, but I think yum is bundled in the distribution so the installation steps will be almost identical. That’s the beauty of Linux. And the system will also tell you whether there are dependency problems it can’t resolve. So you’ll know very quickly whether it’ll fly or not. Good luck!]