[hobbit] Hobbit to IPPhone

[Charles Jones]

Just thought I would send another update and a preview. This has been 
really fun to work on. I think I am going to officially call it 
"Hobbit2IPPhone". I will probably create a sourceforge project and 
whatnot for it as well.

Here is some info on Hobbit2IPPhone:
* Hobbit2IPPhone can be run without touching the Call Manger, or having 
admin access to the CM. All you need is your normal user login and pass 
to the CM (same one you use to set your speed dials, etc).
* Hobbit2IPPhone requires a web server with CGI access (could easily use 
your Hobbit server).
* The web server that the CGI is run on, needs bi-directional 
connectivity to your IPPhone. If you can telnet to port 80 of your 
phones IP address, you should be good to go. The phone also needs to be 
able to hit port 80 of your web server.
* The CGI needs connectivity to your Hobbit server, as it uses $BB to 
query the hobbitdboard to get the host infos. If you are running the CGI 
on your Hobbit server, this is a non-issue as it will just talk to 
localhost just like any server-side Hobbit extension script.
* Hobbit2IPPhone can be run as a sever-side Hobbit extension script, or 
out of a cron job on another server, provided there is connectivity from 
the CGI host to the IPPhone on port 80.

Here's how my phone looks when everything is OK:

* Currently it is optional to display this message if all is green. I 
figured some people may only want their screen to change if there is an 
alert.
* Hitting "update" updates the display. There is also an automatic 
refresh timer.


Heres the view when some alerts have triggered:

As you can see, you get a nice ordered list, with a summary of how many 
hosts are alerting.
* You can select either via the up/down rocker on the phone and then 
hitting "Select"
* You can also select by pressing the number that is next to the alert.
* To make it look nicely formatted I coded it so that it automatically 
truncates the hostname so as not to line wrap.
* Hobbit2IPPhone will override your phones idlescreen/screensaver, so 
any alerts will not be hidden :)
* Due to a limitation in the IPPhone, a maximum of 99 alerts can be 
selected. I hope you never have this many!


Here's what you get when you select a host, in this case, the first one:

Right now I have it showing the current status message for the alert, as 
well as the alert duration. This can easily be configured to display 
anything you can get from hobbitdboard.  I still have to reformat the 
text a bit so that it compacts better. * Text that doesn't fit on the 
screen is accessible by scrolling down.
* When you hit "Exit" you are automatically brought back to the first 
menu (an updated version of it, not a stale copy)
* I also have to truncate the hostname in the upper title "Status for 
..." because the IPPhone is picky and if this is too long, it just bombs 
and won't accept the rest of the data at all!


That's it for now...I'm going to continue hacking on this and try to 
make it as user-friendly as possible before I release it.

-----
Possible future features:
Hobbit2IPPhone 2.0:
* Acknowledge/Enable/Disable alerts from the IPPhone, including text 
input of reason.
* Viewing of some reports or log data, like notification log, alert 
history, etc.

Hobbit2IPPhone 3.0:
* Full graphics implementation - It's possible to have a mini 
hobbit-like display and interface, and even view trends graphs
-----

FAQ:
Q. What model IPPhones will this work on?
A. I am currently developing using a 7960. I assume any 79xx will work.

Q. What about color?
A. Send me a color IP Phone to dev with and I will see what I can do :P
Q. Wha? You work for Cisco, don't you have color IPPhones and routers 
coming out of your ears?
A. I actually work for a nonprofit section of Cisco. We don't have any 
spare equipment, and even with my "discount" I can't afford to buy an 
IPPhone just to play with, otherwise I would run a VOIP network at home :)

Q. Can you make the message light flash, or the phone chirp when there 
is an alert?
A. So far, I don't think so. I have not found anything in the HTTP/XML 
protocol that gives me access to those functions. I'd like that feature 
as well, and I suspect it is possible, so I will keep looking for a way 
to do it.

Q. What software prerequisites are there?
A. Any webserver that can run a Perl CGI script. For Apache, this means 
mod_perl, which shouldn't be a problem for most linux distros, Solaris 
folks may have to jump through some hoops. The script uses the following 
perl modules:
CGI;
LWP::UserAgent;
URI;
Time::localtime;
It may also use Cisco::IPPhone, but thusfar I have written most of my 
own simple XML functions and may remove that dependancy. With the 
exception of Cisco::IPPhone, all of the modules are common ones that 
should be installable via your linux distros package manager. For 
Solaris folks and anyone else, you can install them via CPAN ie "perl 
-MCPAN -e 'install LWP::UserAgent'

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