The point I was trying to make was that I would prefer to have just one
application which distributes to all of the above. I'm not too bothered
about it announcing the name, so that would be an added bonus. I also
like the idea of having access to my call history via a browser when
I'm not at home (as per the linked screenshots above).
Does the xAP solution accomplish all of this?
xAP's whole philosophy is to distribute functionality. You can install
any xAP application anywhere on your intranet (any PC) and its'
functionality is available to the whole network. A peripheral sharer if
you like. It is effectively a broadcast (UDP) implementation where
interested parties choose to listen to information they have an interest
in. It can be 'targeted' at specific nodes instructing them to do
something eg 'display this' or a node can choose to 'display Caller ID '
messages. It is not possible to have private conversations in xAP. So
to answer your question .. yes, one xAP Caller ID application provides
full telephony call progress information including CID to all PC's on
your network. xAP offers (free) popup display applications for Windows
(including Windows MCE2005) and hardware display devices like Tivo /
SB's as well as Windows MCE. It can interface also to any YAC capable
display device. Currently although xAP has TTS it does not implement it
as an interruption and announcement over the Slim player audio. It does
support suspend and resume of playing audio during a telephone call
though - alongside display of the incoming call and callers name etc
A bit of background.. xAP creates truly distributed nodes on your
network, eg one provides an incoming 'Caller ID' service and another a
'Text to Speech' and another a 'Caller ID name /history lookup' and
several others might provide a 'display' service. These can be linked
either directly or through a (free) script engine like xAP Desktop or
xAP. This distributed and segmented approach is cause for one of the
difficulties some people find in getting it all working together- you
need all the components up and running. Several commercial home
automation applications support xAP either directly or via a plugin eg
HomeSeer, MisterHouse, Girder, XLobby etc For SlimServer there is a xAP
connection providing display functionality (including full handling of
queued messages with timed durations to multiple separate named display
devices each with priority overides and suspend / resume) - there is
also an IR receive functionality and a full audio player interface
providing a real time eventing, status and control interface to xAP -
and hence onward to HomeSeer etc. The xAP connector utilises
SlimServers' CLI interface.
With a bit of familiarisation you can use xAP to fully integrate Slim
players within control environments enriching the HA integration. The
Slim players are a really versatile piece of kit - and well established
as the player of choice in the HA community here. Oh - and xAP is free :-)
Kevin
_______________________________________________
discuss mailing list
discuss@lists.slimdevices.com
http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
