T&L Publications

it is great to be back in the forum again after several years absence.

My question is this. I want a gadget that lets me log caller ID's. I want to accumulate a list that can be loaded into a spreadsheet and sorted. I am trying to get stats on the numbers (and names when present). Yes, I have a message machine and phones that show up the CID and let me scroll through a list but have no means of transferring the list.

I reviewed products that do digital recording of calls (audio and CID) and can write to a mem card or input to a computer but they are way over my budget since I am not interested in the audio of the calls. (I don't answer most of them that are clearly spoofs).

in earlier days when I built projects I remember there were chips that decoded CID data but I am beyond project building now. Would be willing to buy a kit if one exists.

Again, good to be back!

I can get all this by downloading my phone bill call log. Have you checked to see if this data is already available in your account online? Its nearly real time and might be good enough.

My Cable provided land line even has a way to build a contact list from call logs. My cellular account, I can download call logs as spreadsheets directly.

Thanks haklesup. My land line (by cable) service does not provide a log of incoming calls.

Still looking for a logging solution. What would work would be any CID decoder that can deliver it's output via USB, or even RS232 serial. I can figure out how to do the rest.

Welcome back.

Sorry I don't have any brilliant ideas. I suppose some CID units could be hackable to read the memory chip(s) and pass the data to a PC, but that would be more project than you want. I'd be interested in the device you describe.

I've been manually logging my caller ID's to a spreadsheet for many years to track telemarketers and similar scam artists, as well as caller ID "spoofing", and the lady who couldn't quite remember that her number was in the second "prefix" for our town (same last 4 digits as my number). I set up 3 separate fields for the area code, prefix, and last 4, which sorts well for me. OK, so that's really "old school".

Dale

Thanks Dale,
Found where this subject had a lengthy thread in the pxiaxe forum...
(see http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread ... er-Project)
But no one came up with a buildable project or inexpensive product. The closest thing I have found is a rather pricey ($169 and up) unit called WHOZZ CALLING? from www.callerid.com.
It has RS232 out and so needs a logger that has a serial interface. This is beginning to get into money!

What a shame since I see the CID decoder chips on Ebay for $2.00. And we all know how cheap micros are. My guess is a project would run less than $30.00 in parts, but then there's coding, memory chip, etc. Arghhh.

do you still have that 56K dial up modem in your PC, you may be able to find software to collecting CID that can be logged. Frankly I haven't looked at Dial up anything for years but last time I did, there seemed to be support for this in some modems.

http://www.pcmech.com/article/use-your- ... ng-how-to/

Parts are usually cheap these days it's the design (and maybe a low volume PCB) that kills the price curve
$30 in parts, +$4500 in NRE (and that might be considered cheap)

Well there'a always crowdfunding

[quote="jimandy"]I want a gadget that lets me log caller ID's. I want to accumulate a list that can be loaded into a spreadsheet and sorted. I am trying to get stats on the numbers (and names when present).[ /quote]
Seems simplest way to do this would be to connect a PC Modem to your phone line and the run any number of free software packages on your PC. A bit of googling turned up this listing of Windows software packages that seem to fit the bill:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/wind ... 88766.aspx

Of course, if DIY is more your thing and you would like to build a stand-alone device, have a look at this project as a starting point for RasPI:

https://murphy101blog.wordpress.com/201 ... r-blocker/

or possibly this one that is Arduino based:

http://learn.linksprite.com/arduino/tea ... id-module/

Hope this helps

Vern

Thanks Vern,

The DIY projects are interesting but I'm staying away from projects that are less than plug and play regardless how simple they might be.
(an age problem)
What I am looking for is something that would just sit there unattended for a period time until I dump it's output (in ascii text) into a computer either through a USB connection or downloaded from an attached SD card.
.
The software choices look interesting but I can't tell from the limited descriptions if they log the call without requiring a user's action when the call pops up on the screen.

I'll keep looking.