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Fun with Advanced Paging 3

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rrmass

Technical User
Aug 14, 2014
48
CA
Goofing around with Advanced Paging today to discover the capabilities.

The Cookoo clock that chimed every hour sure got the wifes attention. Didn't last long though :^(

In going through the documentation for APPP I noticed the mention if a CAB (Customer Assistance Box?).
Can't find much info on the net other than it appears as a digital set with one button paging capabilities.

Also in the APPP documentation was reference to url paging.

That tweaked my interest so I configured a prerecorded message for paging by url, fired up a browser, typed the url with the required options and sure enough it worked like a charm.

Hmmm, maybe if I programmed an Arduino or the like with ethernet or wifi capabilitlies to be a http client and then request the url I could page from a little <$10 box with a button push or some other trigger to make a page.

10 minutes later I had it working.

Anyone have possible applications or interest for such a device?
 
I have yet to mess with Url
So you create 2 short cuts, one for page and one for cancel right?

I actually have 3 CAB boxes but I could use a some more, as well there are others I know would like to get a box.

I use a nice subtle grandfather clock sound for my APPP.

Blackbear would probably be interested.


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Curly,
I used an ESP8266 (sort of an arduino compatible with wifi capability) for the test. It was just a proof of concept.
That unit would be great as it's wifi but would need a power supply as battery power wouldn't last long at all.

Since I just wanted to trigger a page I programmed it to send a page with 0 repeats, wait 10 seconds and then send a cancel.

For different situations the code can be easily modified.

The beauty of this approach is one doesn't have to burn up a port on the BCM to accommodate a CAB and the hardware required is cheap as hell.

The programming of the box would have to be flexible as you have two possible requirements.

Initial setup: Power the device up. It will then have a web page at 192.168.xxx.xxx to setup the ip config stuff. Easy just plugin virtual lego pieces for the program.
For the page you could choose:

1. Shootout a one time page (sends a cancel after the page) with no response required from originator.
2. Continuous or multi repeat page that requires a responce to cancel.

All of the needed options can be programmed into the new box. Eg. plug it in and have it present a web page for config.

In a commercial environment my preference would be a POE powered device on wired Ethernet. Wireless is great, when it works.

Let me know what your requirements would be so I can try to configure some options.
 
I believe APPP became available during a specific release and that you would install the software like you do a patch (it was then included in the next release).
So in other words the software is installed onto the BCM and not a PC, the actual APPP settings you see(if you have an APPP keycode).


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How about a door bell scenario?
Door bell button outside leading to the ESP8266

Rather than a BST with ringing or chime you would have your custom greeting.
"Telemarketer whom lost their phone at the front door"

I do not need one but just throwing that idea out to play with but thanks for that info, they are handy devices and cheap!





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That would be the easiest and could be stand alone and battery powered.
A press of the button powers the unit up, requests a page, cancels page after a predetermined delay and then powers down.
In this scenario depending on the amount of use a li-po battery would last a long time on one charge.

More food for thought, multiple buttons. Since you can address 7 CCR trees and up to 8 page nodes each one has a possibility of 56 different greetings.
You could almost play the piano.
 
Congrats!
Being able to add more features on the APPP is awesome !

I was just wondering, can I see an example of a URL link that would
Trigger a page announcement ?

I have two CABs.
I use one for paging an announcement and the other to send a BCM text message to a certain DN.

If I understand this post correctly, we could possibly send paging commands to the BCM from any computer
On the network using the web browser.

Any comments?

Cheers!
SL

 
Hmmm, Tek-Tips wants to mangle the url so just add an extra "t" to the "htp" part

URL with user name and password:

htp://<nnpage>:<nnpagePassword>@<BCMIPAddress>/Voicemail-cgi-bin/BCMPage?station=<KioskName>&page=<xy>&status=<action>

htp://nnpage:nnpagepassword@192.168.1.1/Voicemail-cgi-bin/BCMPage?station=MyCabBox&page=11&status=new

nnpage: is the userid for the account setup in Element Manager.
nnpagePassword: is the password for the nnpage account.
BCMIPAddress: self explanatory
Station: is the name of the CAB box. You can stick anything in there
page: 1st digit is CCR Tree number(1-7) and 2nd is Park & Page node number(1-8)
status: new or cancel.

Check the Advanced Paging Productivity Pack documentation for a more detailed explanation.
 
You can put anything in the Kiosk name. The docs say that it's only used for entry in the CDR logs.

I guess their intent may have been so you can check how fast the pages are answered since you would have the time the new page was sent and the time it was cancelled.
 
A Raspberry Pi would be overpriced overkill for this application.
 
Browsers no longer support login credentials in the url address so it's a pain to have to login every page.
Once logged in you could keep doing pages without further logins as long as the browser is not closed and also when saving passwords on the browser may help.

But sadly I just spent 10 hours looking for ways around this and thankfully finally ended up with a vbs script for chrome and firefox as the best option.

I created a page with the code and instructions here

There are lots of scripts to use out there and you can usually edit them further too.
You can edit chrome.exe to firefox.exe, but iexplorer.exe does not work and I am not sure how to use IE or Edge at the moment.


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Good catch Curly. I never bothered trying to launch a page from a desktop shortcut only from a bookmark in the browser which worked fine.

Your vb script definitely solves that problem. If you let the browser save the login credentials (at least with firefox) it will auto fill the ID and password but you'll still have to click the OK button. One extra mouse click.
 
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