[hobbit] Hobbit to IPPhone

[Galen Johnson]

When you get your project set up, let me know and I'll put a link on The Shire front page.

=G=

From: Charles Jones [mailto:jonescr at cisco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 10:54 PM
To: hobbit at hswn.dk
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit to IPPhone

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:
[cid:image001.jpg at 01C883D5.C809D760]
* 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:
[cid:image002.jpg at 01C883D5.C809D760]
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:
[cid:image003.jpg at 01C883D5.C809D760]
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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