Orchid V4, V4+ Programing Tool Support

drbig

Mine has packed in after years a faithful service anyone know where I may be able to put my hands on one or an alternative

Thanks in advance

Heinz

drbig wrote: »

Mine has packed in after years a faithful service anyone know where I may be able to put my hands on one or an alternative

The only possible new alternative is Orchid's CPS dialler BUT, that is nowhere near as 'clever' as the V4 (e.g. it has no day/date/time programmability) and, in any case, is probably only available to businesses.

Otherwise, keeping a close eye on online auction sites is recommended.

voxmagna

It's been a while since I posted and that is because I'm 100% happy with my V4 and Heinz's spreadsheet.:T
I use a cheap USB 'Zoom' modem a bought from Fleabay, but also have an old Win98SE laptop with integral V90 modem I'm going to try. I update the V4 on the GMT/BST hour change dates and it just keeps going on and on!

My line contract is with Onetel, and I'm sending my daytime calls CPS to Call 18185. As anybody on the basic Onetel contract will know, as of January 3rd 2012, Onetel want to sting people like me for any daytime calls, charging a call connection of 13.1p and a minute rate of 7.95p 7a.m to 7p.m. Evening and weekend calls are still free outside these times, so guess how my V4 is set up!

The last couple of Onetel bills have shown a couple of daytime calls which have not routed to my CPS provider. There is no duplicate entry on their bill so I can only think that the V4 didn't route with the prefix, or there is skullduggery at OneTel/TalkTalk or BT who my line contract is with.

Does anybody know (Heinz?) if a dialling pause can be inserted after the carrier prefix code for all numbers dialled. I'm wondering if that might help route 100% of my calls correctly. Or does anybody have any other ideas?

I'm sticking with my 'unbundled' phone and internet services so I still have the freedom to put my own 'packages' together without CPS restrictions hidden in the small print!

Thanks

Heinz

voxmagna wrote: »

Does anybody know (Heinz?) if a dialling pause can be inserted after the carrier prefix code for all numbers dialled. I'm wondering if that might help route 100% of my calls correctly.

Let's not take the kudos away from him - it's Kevin Lawry's spreadsheet, merely containing the last Heinz program.

Yes, a one second pause can be inserted in any Carrier Code by adding a # to the program string. An example of that is already evident in cell B9 (D9) where five # symbols are shown to denote 5 seconds of pause.

If you want to add a pause to Carrier Code 1 (i.e. after the Orchid dials 18185 for your weekday daytime 01/02/03 calls), you just add a # to the string in cell B5 (D5).

Cell B5 would then read 18185# and cell D5 would then automatically change to *#**18185#*1

voxmagna

Sorry about the attribution. I haven't done anything to the V4 for ages, so I lost touch. Thanks for reminding me.

Thanks also for the reply on what I used to know as 'inter-digital pause'. I don't know if this will make the CPS dials 100% reliable, but I'll give it a try. OK I've now added a # before AND after the 18185 code, just in case the first character in the carrier code wasn't getting through (could be a DECT thing syncing when you pick up the handset. I'm assuming if that happens, the BT end may ignore the rest of the CPS and route over OneTel, which is bad news during the day.

Whilst I get and like the call 18185 pre-amble message, I don't get anything with Onetel/Talk Talk.

I have a circuit I was thinking of building to read DTMF tones on the line. This would help get some confirmation of what the V4 is getting. I don't think it's sophistocated enough to sit across the line and log everything dialled, which is probably what I need for the Onetel problem. But even if you know what was sent down the line, you still don't know if the BT end is 100% reliable.

Cheers - Vox

Lplates

voxmagna wrote: »

I have a circuit I was thinking of building to read DTMF tones on the line. This would help get some confirmation of what the V4 is getting. I don't think it's sophistocated enough to sit across the line and log everything dialled, which is probably what I need for the Onetel problem. But even if you know what was sent down the line, you still don't know if the BT end is 100% reliable.

I use one of these

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FSK-DTMF-Calle...-/280437181087

It's a nice cheap caller ID device (CLI decoder), but it also reads the DTMF signals that are being sent to the line.

Thus you can connect it (1) between modem and dialler, to verify the setup codes that are being sent to the dialler, and (2) between dialler and phone line, to verify that the correct result is being sent to line by the dialler.

This should provide you with all the reassurance you need that your dialler is being correctly programmed, and that it is subsequently dialling correctly. Plus, if you don't already have CLI decoding on your phones, you can see who is calling you. In my view, all this is worth a few pounds.

digital

When I bought my dialler, Orchid programmed a couple of individual telephone numbers into it for me to allow special routing for those numbers. Is it possible to do this by entering tones via the keypad? If so, what are the codes I need to use?

Heinz

digital wrote: »

When I bought my dialler, Orchid programmed a couple of individual telephone numbers into it for me to allow special routing for those numbers. Is it possible to do this by entering tones via the keypad? If so, what are the codes I need to use?

Yes it's possible BUT, before you can do so you MUST know your existing program (i.e. your Carriers and Routings). There are 8 possible entries of Carriers and up to 99 possible Routings.

Although it would be easy to add a new Routing (it's unlikely more than 30 Routings currently exist so Routing 97 is probably free to use), you need to know the positions of the (up to) 8 Carriers so you can work out what programming string you need to enter.

What exactly do you want to do?

shilcor

I think you should be able to do what you want quite easily. You'd need to know of a free location in both your routing code table and your carrier code table (if you need to add a new carrier code to do the routing) but as an example, if you are not using routing code table location 30 or carrier code table location 9 then you could use the following keypad sequences where xxxxxxxxxxx is the phone number you dial and yyy is the special routing dialing prefix you want to use for it :-

To add the routing code entry at location 30:-

*###xxxxxxxxxxx#3999#30#

To add a new carrier code entry at location 9 :-

*#**yyy*9

If I'm wrong I hope Heinz will correct me but I think the above should work. You don't say what special routing they added so you may already have the required carrier code entry in which case substitute the "9" in the above example for the carrier code entry they programmed for you and don't bother with the second line at all.

Heinz

Using shilcor's example but substituting 'real' numbers to make it easier to understand, the below are the 2 sequences you would key if you wanted the Orchid to Translate the dialling of 123 into 02070431320 (IF you were sure Carrier 8 and Routing 97 were vacant):

*#**02070431320*8 (to create the new Carrier 8 for the Translate instruction to dial) and then

*###123#5888#97# (to create the new Translate instruction/Routing).