Ok... so here's the situation. I work at a high school and during class change they play music over the speakers. But it is all done by hand.
Is there any way to plug the phone line into a computer, have it dial the code for an "all-call" and then play a specified sound file for a specific amount of time? And then schedule what time on what days to do so?
It seems like a VERY basic thing to make a computer do, but alas I don't know how. I have a small amount of vb programming knowledge so if there's a way to like embed it into an excel spreadsheet where we can type the times in that would be amazing.
Thoughts?
It could be automated but the effort and equipment required probably doesn't make it worth while. I have ni idea how a phone line line and a dial-ip Modem would have anything to do with this. Unless the original music is being played over a phone, which I very much doubt, there is no point in involving a phone line.
It is more likely a CD player in the school secretaries office plugged into the the intercom system.
Stuart
Can you pop a patch from the output of a soundcard into the intercom directly? Most intercoms have a jack for "music-on-hold" or something like it. If you need to dial an all-call (something like [itcm *] maybe), then maybe Rasdial can do the dialing. If the phone-system and intercom are key-system based, however, there may be difficulties there. I am not "there" to experiment, and I don't have any equipment, so you will have tackle the front-line combat. You will need to consult the manuals or tech-support for the intercom/phone system you are using. It's never as easy as we think (unless we're professionals, and I know I am not!)
If you get that far, the computer control will probably not be hard: media-player set up on an "at" or "schtasks", and a time-out (task-kill) setting.
