TwoToneDetect Beta

[aaknitt]

I've put together a program for detecting two tone pages and upon detection, recording 30 seconds of audio and sending it to a specified email address as a .WAV file. I wrote this for my own use, but am making it available for others who might find it helpful. It's not very polished at this point, but it does what I need it to do. Requests for new features may or may not be acted on, depending on complexity and the time I have available.

Features include:

• Audio frequency counter for finding tone frequencies with PC sound card
• Decodes up to 5 two-tone pairs and 3 long tones
• Upon detecting a valid tone set, records 30 seconds of audio and emails it to a specified address as a .wav file attachment
• Provides limited serial port control of BCD396T and similar scanners to provide fire tone out functionality on multiple frequencies at the same time by skipping transmissions that are not valid tones

Installation is somewhat of a pain in the neck because of the large runtime engines that have to be downloaded in order to make the program run. I wrote it in LabView because that made it easy. I'm starting to play around with C# programming, and if I figure that out, I may make a version in that language that should be much easier to install.

Install instructions, basic instructions, and a rudimentary download are at http://radioetcetera.googlepages.com/twotoneprogram

Feedback through this thread is welcome.

Regards,

Andy

 

[lchspanther2006]

Actually it already does this. If you're hearing all of the audio coming across the air (not just audio after valid tones are decoded), it's because you don't have the LINE IN (or MIC IN if you're using that) muted in the Windows mixer (in Vista this is the "input mute" box in the speaker levels setting dialog). Mute the input you're using, and then make sure the "Play Audio While Recording" box is checked in TwoToneDetect. You should then hear only what's being recorded come across your computer speakers, although it will be delayed by a second or two from real time.

I hope that makes sense.

Andy

OH...I should have realized to do that. I just changed the mute and now everything wors WONDERFULLY!!! Thanks for the tip....

Ron

 

[Kirk]

Just wanted to say I installed this software last weekend, and it works like a champ! I'm pushing emails with mp3s to my iPhone and am loving it.

If you're soliciting for feature requests, it would be for the software to support selecting the audio source in one of the following ways:

1. Clickboxes to select monitoring left/right/both
2. Drop down to select which audio device to monitor

I'm thinking I want to set up a second copy of the software to monitor a different radio. If XP will run two copies of your software simultaneously and I'm able to select L or R, then that's the easiest solution. Next easiest is to add a second sound card (external usb) for the second radio. Last solution is a second sound card, and run VMWare with a second instance of XP for the second radio.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again for a great app!

 

[GTR8000]

I thought of a few more features I'd love to see added:

- The ability to change the audio quality settings. I understand why you choose such a low bitrate, to keep the file small for emailing. Now that it supports .mp3, I'd like the ability to tweak it if I wish.

- The ability to assign a unique outgoing email address to each tone set, rather than one global email. Reason being, I'd like to setup a mailing list for different stations whereby a certain tone set sends an email to just that particular group.

- More tone sets, which I know you already have in the works. Perhaps there is a way to allow nearly unlimited tone sets (within reason) based on a setting in the config file?

Program is still working great!

 

[aaknitt]

1. Clickboxes to select monitoring left/right/both
2. Drop down to select which audio device to monitor

I'll see what I can do with this...I should be able to provide something, even if it's not real elegant.

- The ability to change the audio quality settings. I understand why you choose such a low bitrate, to keep the file small for emailing. Now that it supports .mp3, I'd like the ability to tweak it if I wish.

I figured you'd ask for this :lol: It's definitely doable, but it'll be lower on the priority list. Not hard, just takes some time.

- The ability to assign a unique outgoing email address to each tone set, rather than one global email. Reason being, I'd like to setup a mailing list for different stations whereby a certain tone set sends an email to just that particular group.

I originally was going to do this, and it's certainly possible. However, I've been able to get the same functionality by using the filtering features in gmail (send all emails to myself, then filter based on subject to automatically forward to different addresses). I can add this if there's enough demand though.

- More tone sets, which I know you already have in the works. Perhaps there is a way to allow nearly unlimited tone sets (within reason) based on a setting in the config file?

I'm running a version on my PC right now that supports ten two tone sets and three long tone sets. More can be added. I think 20 would be a good upper limit, we'll see.

None of these changes are very difficult, but they do take time. I'm going to be traveling a lot over the next two months, so updates may be slow to come out for awhile.

Andy

 

[GTR8000]

Once again, I appreciate not only the fact that you give all these suggestions consideration, but that you've actually implemented just about all of them.


- Yeah the changing of the audio bitrate isn't a huge priority, just one of those little extras that might be nice to eventually incorporate.

- The Gmail filtering works, but it's really not all that efficient, especially in trying to get an alert out as quickly as possible*. Gmail way: email is sent to one Gmail address...Gmail filters based on the subject...Gmail forwards to a mailing list email address...mailing list email address forwards to subscriber addresses. Other way: email is sent directly to mailing list email address based on individual tone set...mailing list forwards to subscriber emails. I hate being at the mercy of Gmail for such a great program like this. Also keep in mind per one of my previous posts, that the "gmail" setting seems to work fine with a regular non-Gmail POP3/SMTP email account that requires authentication, so I don't even use Gmail with the program at all.

- 20 two-tone sets is probably a realistic upper limit. I have experimented with running two instances of the program simultaneously, and it seems to work fine, which would give you 40 two-tone sets if need be.

Thanks again, and safe travels!


*Naturally heeding your warning that this program should not be used as a means of alerting, however if used as an alternate means of "notification", obviously the quicker the email delivery the better.

 

[aaknitt]

New Version Available

I just uploaded a new version with the following features:

Additional Tone Sets - Now supports 10 two tone sets and 3 long tone sets
Support for Multiple Sound Cards - Allows you to choose which sound card device you want to use for record and playback (they don't have to be the same). Unfortunately, the code that queried the computer to identify the sound cards by name doesn't seem to want to work with Vista, so I pulled it out completely. Instead, the choices are simply "Default, Alternate 1, and Alternate 2". The default is whichever you have set as default through Windows. A few minutes of experimenting and you should be able to figure out which is which. As a side note, using the left/right channels would require some major modifications to the program. Running two instances with separate sound cards is the much easier (from my perspective) way to do it.
Separate "Send To" email addresses for each tone set - Self explanatory
Control of DTR/RTS serial port pins for hardware scanner control - If you have a scanner that doesn't have a serial port, you can hack into it and with some additional circuitry "push" the SCAN and HOLD buttons via these two serial port pins. RTS pulses +12V for "SCAN" and DTR pulses +12V for "HOLD". Keep in mind that these are at -12V at other times, so some diodes will be needed to keep things safe in the circuit.

Making the audio quality settings user-adjustable was going to take more brain power than I have left on a Friday night, so that will wait for awhile. Also, to add more tone sets than what I have now I'm going to have to do some thinking on how to clean up the front panel since it's getting overcrowded, so that will be a ways off as well.

Finally, because of all of the new parameters and settings, the old config file will not work with the new version. You'll have to re-enter the info.

Enjoy!

Andy

 

[GTR8000]

Andy...could you please write the new version of Windows???

Downloading new version now...will report back after playing with it!

 

[jantman]

Any plans on releasing the source code, and if so, under what license?

I've been wanting, for a while, to write something like this that will run under any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.).

 

[aaknitt]

Any plans on releasing the source code, and if so, under what license?

I've been wanting, for a while, to write something like this that will run under any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.).

I've got no problem with making the code available...GNU, whatever, I'm not picky. The problem is that it's written in LabView, which isn't a typical programming language. I'm a complete novice when it comes to programming for Windows/Mac/Linux (I'm more of an embedded systems/assembly language guy), but if you want to collaborate on something, I'm in!

Andy

 

[jantman]

That's fine by me. I'm currently a college student (IT) and my roommate is an electrical & computer engineering major... LabView sounds familiar, and I'm sure I can find someone around who's used it.

My big issue is that when I started this before, there was just so much that I had to do (audio sampling, detecting the tones, recording, etc.) and I wanted to do it in something cross-platform and interpreted (Java, Python, etc) that I just didn't know where to start. I was desperately looking for someone who had done anything similar so I could get ideas... but I couldn't find anyone who would open up their code.

-J

 

[Kirk]

Two more ideas....

1. A button to send a test email. Makes life easier than waiting for a set of tones to come across to make sure you've got the email settings working.

2. DTMF decoding. (ok, I know, but I can dream, right?)

 

[aaknitt]

That's fine by me. I'm currently a college student (IT) and my roommate is an electrical & computer engineering major... LabView sounds familiar, and I'm sure I can find someone around who's used it.

My big issue is that when I started this before, there was just so much that I had to do (audio sampling, detecting the tones, recording, etc.) and I wanted to do it in something cross-platform and interpreted (Java, Python, etc) that I just didn't know where to start. I was desperately looking for someone who had done anything similar so I could get ideas... but I couldn't find anyone who would open up their code.

-J

I know that LabView is available for both Linux and Mac OSs, but I only have the windows version and so can only build applications for Windows. If someone else has LabView on Linux or a Mac (with the application builder), they could easily use my code to build apps for those operating systems.

 

[GTR8000]

The latest version is working great. Separate email addresses for each page = a GODSEND!


Is it possible to have the audio clips saved elsewhere besides the Data subfolder? I'm not too keen on them being in the same folder as the config, dll and lame files, as the possibility exists of accidentally deleting a critical file while cleaning out the old clips. I'm not sure how much flexibility you have with this, so here are three suggested options in order of best to least favorable:

Best option - a way to specify the audio clip folder where it can be changed easily if need be

Decent option - a way to specify the audio clip folder upon installation...can only be changed by re-installing the program

Worst option - audio clips are saved to C:\Program Files\TwoToneDetect\Audio folder by default and can't be changed

 

[jantman]

I know that LabView is available for both Linux and Mac OSs, but I only have the windows version and so can only build applications for Windows. If someone else has LabView on Linux or a Mac (with the application builder), they could easily use my code to build apps for those operating systems.

Being that I work for a university, I'm sure we have a Linux copy floating around somewhere...

if you want to send me the code, jason AT jason antman DOT com. Please include some sort of license notice explaining what license it's being given under, or at least your decision on modifying your code, redistributing it, etc.

 

[phillip3225]

Has anybody else had this error? I think it is a problem with my computer because it installed fine on a different computer. "The VI is not executable. The full development version of LabView is required to fix the errors."

Thanks

 

[phillip3225]

Has anybody else had this error? I think it is a problem with my computer because it installed fine on a different computer. "The VI is not executable. The full development version of LabView is required to fix the errors."

Thanks

Figured it out! I had to download 3.5 .net framework. Thanks for the program.

 

[HarryWilly]

Feature Request

I too would like source code to be released to build in Mac OS X... :lol:

I'd like to see a sister to the program that does user defined macros so upon decoding you could have it play a sound (Station 51 or FDNY house tones are what I am thinking :twisted or display a message or activate relays via appropriate hardware or whatever... with the cost of a used computer and scanner that could do all this makes it much cheaper (although bigger and no battery back up) than a Federal Informer or even a Minitor/Amplified Charger combo.

 

[jantman]

I'd like to see a sister to the program that does user defined macros so upon decoding you could have it play a sound or display a message or activate relays via appropriate hardware or whatever... with the cost of a used computer and scanner that could do all this makes it much cheaper (although bigger and no battery back up) than a Federal Informer or even a Minitor/Amplified Charger combo.

My plan, if I ever find the time, is to write something like this in a language like Python or Java (something that will run on Linux, Windows, Mac, and everything else) and be able to "listen" to the sound card, detect tones (a few sets) and then... perform some sort of action. In the Linux/Unix/Mac world my idea would be to just have it execute a command that could do anything, but I'm not sure what would be best for Windows users.

 

[dimab]

i have not used the program yet, but here is my question -
when audio is recorded for a predetermined amount, 30 seconds, is that 30 seconds running time on the local PC or 30 seconds of recorded audio (transmissions only, which could take more than 30 seconds of real time)?

I this type of system rigged up with a few pieces of software that did the trick, but this seems to be a very smooth all in one product. I"ll be installing tonight.

 

[HarryWilly]

Antman,

you may know me better as Robert W. on elb. Anyway, I would be interested in a python port if you do it from ground up... what would be more interesting on the mac side of things is if you included applescript (not that hard) or automator (fairly challenging) support.

I am going to install and test this product on my windows box for now.