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Microsoft Visual Basic Software DownloadNOTE:This is an actual working version. For the program to work as intended you need an Identifier, Visual Basic 6.0, and Caller ID service from your telephone company.These download files contains a Microsoft Visual Basic project file (Identifier.vbp) and form file (Identifier.frm). You must have enough experience with Visual Basic to know what to do with these files to get the application to work. It contains a form which uses the MS Comm Control. This control may need to be registered in order to work. |
About the Software and ProgrammingThe Identifier was designed to easily integrate with software applications. The Identifier sends an ASCII string to the computer via the serial port when ever it sees an event on a phone line. This event string is very simple to process.If you want to integrate the Identifier with an existing application and you already know how to access a serial port, it should take less than an hour to write a basic interface. This is an example Microsoft Visual Basic application which demonstrates how easily the Identifier interfaces with Visual Basic. It uses the MS Comm Control. This Microsoft control comes with Visual Basic.
UPDATE: This software was originally written in VB4 back in the mid '90's. Today there are much better ways to access the COM port. There are some suggestions on the MS Comm Control Page The programming techniques to process the output from the Identifier explained here are still valid even though the code is outdated. By the way this and the free VB modem caller id project are the only VB code I ever wrote. And they were written over 10 years ago. Go easy on the critique of my style. The Identifier output strings (events) always start with a plus sign and end with a carriage return (see examples below). Be sure to also look at the Identifier's output example's page. as well as in "Identifier Event Format" section a couple of paragraphs down on this page. This VB software monitors the serial port. It sets up the MS Comm control to fire an event upon reception of each character transmitted from the Identifier. It looks for a plus sign. Once it see the plus sign it saves the following characters until it sees a carriage return. As soon as it sees the carriage return it processes the event. Comm Port RoutineThe following portion of the source code shows how each character is processed as it is received from the serial port. This code runs when the MS Comm control fires its "comEvReceive" event. The character is assigned to the variable "strCommChar". |
Select Case strCommChar
Case "+" 'Beginning of Identifier Event
strIdentifier = ""
Case Chr$(10) 'Ignore the Line Feed after the CR
' ignore line feed
Case Chr$(13) 'Carriage Return, End of Identifier Event String
IdentifierEvent (strIdentifier) ' The Identifier Event is passed to a processing routine
Case Else 'Append the received character to the Identifier String
strIdentifier = strIdentifier + strCommChar
End Select
Identifier Event FormatThe first character after the plus sign identifies what type of Identifier event occurred. Although commas separate the data in the event string, it is actually a fixed field format. Therefore you do not have to search for the commas to extract the data. A simple substring function is all that is required because the data is always in the same place for each type of event.WARNING: If you want to use a comma delimited function such as split() or filter(), beaware that the caller id name field may contain a comma. So on a +1 caller id event do not use these functions. The following is an annotated example of the real time data from the Identifier with all events enabled. The example is two calls, one to another line with Caller ID and one to a line with Distinctive Ring but no Caller ID. This example has all realtime events enabled. Each type of event may selectively turn on or off. All data is output in a fixed field format. |
+2,4,002 OFF HOOK OUTGOING LINE 2 +5,3,002 DTMF DIGIT 3 PRESSED LINE 2 +5,4,002 " 4 " +5,4,002 " 4 " +5,7,002 " 7 " +5,6,002 " 6 " +5,6,002 " 6 " +5,5,002 " 5 " +2,1,001 RING START LINE 1 +2,2,001 RING STOP LINE 1 +1,9543447665,Y E S TELECOM ,001 CALLER ID INFO INCOMING LINE 1 +2,1,001 RING START LINE 1 +2,2,001 RING STOP LINE 1 +2,3,001 OFF HOOK INCOMING LINE 1 +2,0,002 ON HOOK LINE 2 IDLE +2,0,003 ON HOOK LINE 1 IDLE
Event Processing ExampleThe following source code takes the Identifier Event string passed by the above Comm routine and extracts the information. The Identifier Event string is passed without the preceding plus sign. The first character indicates the type of Identifier Event. The types are:
Event Processing Source Code |
strEventType = Mid$(strEvent, 1, 1) 'The first character indicates the type of event
Select Case strEventType
Case "1" 'Caller ID Event
intLineNumber = CByte(Mid$(strEvent, 30, 3)) 'Get line number
strCallerIdNumber = Mid$(strEvent, 3, 10) 'Get Caller's phone number
strCallerIdName = Mid$(strEvent, 14, 15) 'Get Caller ID Name
Case "2" 'Line status event
intLineNumber = CByte(Mid$(strEvent, 5, 3)) 'Get Line Number
Select Case Mid$(strEvent, 3, 1) 'Get type of line status event
Case "0" 'On hook/Idle event
strDialed(intLineNumber) = "" ' Clear all data
strCallerIdName = ""
strCallerIdNumber = ""
strStatus = "Idle"
Case "1" 'Ring Start Event
strStatus = "Ringing"
Case "3" 'Off Hook incoming call
strStatus = "Answered"
Case "4"
strStatus = "Outgoing Call" 'Off Hook originating call
End Select
Case "3" 'Serial Number or Watchdog Event
Exit Sub ' Do not process
Case "4" 'Caller ID Event - Out of Area or Private
intLineNumber = CByte(Mid$(strEvent, 5, 3))
strCallerIdNumber = ""
If Mid$(strEvent, 3, 1) = "P" Then 'Private Caller ID, blocked by caller
strCallerIdName = "Private"
Else
strCallerIdName = "Out of Area" 'Caller ID data not available to telco
End If
Case "5" 'DTMF event
intLineNumber = CByte(Mid$(strEvent, 5, 3)) 'Get line number and Save this digit
' with any previous digits received
' on this line
strDialed(intLineNumber) = strDialed(intLineNumber) + Mid$(strEvent, 3, 1)
'Third char. of event is the Digit
Case "8" ' Caller ID Signal Error Event
intLineNumber = CByte(Mid$(strEvent, 5, 3))
strCallerIdName = "Unknown"
End Select