Golden opportunity for EE students-Project Idea..will fund

[danielnb]

1. We need some helping in designing a device. As of now we believe that this is a very simplified version of a telephone. We consider it a Simplified version for the following reasons:
a. It works on the already existing telephone lines.
b. It doesn’t need a key pad or an earpiece and a mouth piece.
c. It has to call a preprogrammed number which can part of the code.
2. We need the device to be 4 inches in length and breadth. It shall not have any kind of power source of its own. It will use the 12v of power from the telephone line.
3. Once the design is finalized we want to the mass production cost per unit to be less than $4.

 

[zevon8]

does it have to be blue?

 

[danielnb]

Serious enquiries only

I dont know what you meant by "blue". Email me at danielbethapudi@hotmail.com..if you are serious and want to work on it.
thanks
Daniel

 

[John Sorensen]

Is this the EE equivalent of paying someone to write your term paper?

j.

 

[BartSimpson]

I think what zevon8 meant to ask was, how much is a pass grade worth ?
How many do you intend to manufacture to get manufacturing costs below $4-
I assume we are talking US$4-

Does your US$4- per unit cost to manufacture need to include a return on engineering and tooling costs ?
What is your amortization of engineering and tooling costs ?

Is the $4- an original cost or a cost after they have been returned and bought from a surplus purchaser ?

If it doesn't have a mouthpiece or earpiece, how is it supposed to work ?
Can we plug electrodes directly into the users brain ?

 

[danielnb]

BartSimpson,
You do sound like your namesake. The reason why I talked about $4 mark on the cost is to make sure that people dont end up using costly components and to make sure that there is some financial viablity to the project.
You wanted to sound as someone really smart but in the effort you made yourself a little too much like Bart. Grow up.
I once again wanna say that I want only serious enquiries.
thanks
Daniel

 

[danielnb]

BartSimpson,
You do sound like your namesake. The reason why I talked about $4 mark on the cost is to make sure that people dont end up using costly components and to make sure that there is some financial viablity to the project.
You wanted to sound as someone really smart but in the effort you made yourself a little too much like Bart. Grow up.
I once again wanna say that I want only serious enquiries.
thanks
Daniel

 

[goodpickles]

Excuse me for replying, I may be serious...But I don't know till I have some more info. I would like to echo Barts question, how is it supposed to work with no speakers-etc. Or maybe I should word it this way what is it for?

 

[BartSimpson]

goodpickles, not having a mouthpiece or earpiece is the least of your worries.

The really cute part of this device is that it does not have a keypad as it has to call a pre-programmed number. Therefore the number must be stored somewhere in the "project phone". The easiest and cheapest way to do this would be for all of the phones to be hard-coded with the same phone number which will create two interesting scenarios. First you wouldn't want to be the poor bugger who has the phone all these things are calling :lol: Secondly, if you bought one, you'd be awfully peaved if the person you are trying to call is always on the phone and all you can get is a line-busy tone :cry: Food for thought :wink:

 

[e]

goodpickles, not having a mouthpiece or earpiece is the least of your worries.

The really cute part of this device is that it does not have a keypad as it has to call a pre-programmed number. Therefore the number must be stored somewhere in the "project phone". The easiest and cheapest way to do this would be for all of the phones to be hard-coded with the same phone number which will create two interesting scenarios. First you wouldn't want to be the poor bugger who has the phone all these things are calling :lol: Secondly, if you bought one, you'd be awfully peaved if the person you are trying to call is always on the phone and all you can get is a line-busy tone :cry: Food for thought :wink:

dont forget the long distance calls :lol:

 

[danielnb]

Well this device is supposed to call in an IVR...and in a way ..yes Bart you are right...we want this device to call a preprogrammed number and just that number. And this can be written into the code. The way it works is:
Whenever the customer wants to call into the company IVR...he will insert this device into the phone line and push a button on doing this the device will call the preprogrammed number and wait for the IVR to answer and download the tone into the IVR. We need to assign a unique number to each device so that the IVR can recognize the device called.

 

[BartSimpson]

Ah, it becomes a little clearer now. Excuse my ignorance, but I don't know what an IVR is, although I will assume it is a call centre.

It seems that you don't need a telephone though, but a single button dialer, is that correct ?

Person picks up the phone, holds your "project phone" against the mouthpiece and presses a button. Your "project phone" blurts out the DTMF tones which results in the real telephone dialing the IVR.

Now comes the tricky part. When the IVR answers, you need another tone sequence to be sent so the IVR knows who is calling.

Is that about it ?

Can you have two buttons on the "project phone" ?
One to dial the number and one to identify the caller once the IVR has answered.
If the user presses the same button again, they will send the calling phone number to the IVR. I assume that after a short while the IVR will learn to recognise that sequence. Can the IVR yell down the phone, "Press the OTHER button you idiot "

Will the IVR wait a while once it has answered the line ?
If so, you might be able to just have the "project phone" dial the number, then wait for say 10 seconds before blurting out it's serial number.

What happens after the "project phone" has identified itself ?

Or does the person need to uplug their telephone and plug your device in ?

Can you find an extra buck in your budget, I may be interested...

 

[danielnb]

Bart,
IVR= Interactive Voice Response.
May be you are right ..we are looking for a single button dialer...which will dail into the IVR wait for it to answer and read it's script and once thats over download the tone sequence sothat the IVR knows who is calling.
We want it to accomplish all this on pushing one button. May be it can wait for 10-15 seconds after the IVR has responded and then download the tones.
Our device should disconnect on it's own once it has downloaded it's tones. Will find out if the IVR will disconnect...not too sure as of now.
Yes the person needs to unplug their telephone and plug the device in .
Let me know your ideas..may be we can work that buck out.

 

[BartSimpson]

Okay, you've got one very basic problem in your logic flow before you start.

I assume this IVR automatically bills the caller each time they press the button. If this is the case, then you don't want the IVR to blurt out it's message until after the caller has identified themselves.

You want this to be as cheap as possible so you can't go making custom phones. You need to work with what the customer already has - a working telephone. What you need is a small black box which does the following.

User presses a button and the box emits a DTMF seuquence which dials the desired number. After a fixed time period the box then emits a second DTMF sequence which identifies the box (customer) for billing purposes.

If this fixed period of time creates a problem, have the user press the same button again after the IVR has answered. The IVR could even prompt the customer to press their button again. This could lead to a few weird issues like the twit holding the box pressing the button out of sequence etc, but you could easily handle that by careful selection of your customer-ID tone sequence ( make sure it is something that won't dial an International Phone number or the like - I'd probably start the sequence with some known tones that the telcos would ignore ) Your IVR would also need to be able to recognise it's own phone number and be able to tell the person to press the button again if they got it wrong. It shouldn't be to hard to come up with a simple scheme which catered to morons who can't even press a button properly, but you had better do that, as they are out there and will probably be using your device. A bit of playing should sort this one out quite easily.

The user picks up their normal phone and holds it normally, they hold your small box against the mouthpiece and press the button. The IVR will answer the call, wait for the Identification tone, play the message and then hang-up. After the user has heard the secret decrypter message they will hang-up their phone too.

You're not going to do this without a battery, but you should be able to make something that will run for years on a single button-cell.

Attempting to power it from the phone line is fraught with problems. For starters you may need telco approval to hang a device off of their phone line. Then you've got the issue of different voltage being used. Contrary to what you may think, it isn't just a nice simple 12v signal. From memory, the ring voltage can be about 90v. Then there is the issue whereby some phones tha tlook like phones aren'r really phones. Well they are, but they don't use anything like a normal phone line as they only work with their own custom PABX or equivelent.

I'm not interested in building this for you. The last time someone wanted to mass produce something they assured me they were going to build in runs of 250,000 of the gadget and wanted it to cost under US$10- After I spent a week doing a feasibility study and told them it could be done, they said that on production of a working proto-type, they would place an order for 10,000 units. That wouldn't have even covered the setup and tooling costs, let alone the purchase of development tools and engineering time. At only 10,000 units all costs would have gone through the roof also. After explaining the simple economics to them, I never heard from them again. Funny that... What really pissed me off is that I had explained all of this to them in detail, before I wasted a week of my time.

Back to your Term Paper. What you need to do is start searching the net for PIC and/or AVR DTMF generators. Good luck with it, it should be pretty simple now that we have defined the task

If you really want to sling a few bucks my way, then send me a PM and let me know how much you are prepared to pay and exactly what has to be done. Be warned though, I am not cheap and you have just used your one free, feasibility study consultation :lol:

 

[danielnb]

Bart,
I must tell you that this is not a term paper. I actually came across a device which does something close to what you said. It's a card that is held to the mouthpiece and on pressing a button it will call...but we want it to download a unique DTMF tone on pressing the second button.
I'm sorry that you have had a bad experience. But in our case we want to try out the feasibility of this device. And as long as this device doesn't cost us much more than what we have in mind we are willing to try this out. Let me know what your terms and conditions are on this. I'm also sending you a link to the product that I looked at. May be it will give an idea as to how it's gonna work.

**broken link removed**

let me know

 

[danielnb]

Bart,
I must tell you that this is not a term paper. I actually came across a device which does something close to what you said. It's a card that is held to the mouthpiece and on pressing a button it will call...but we want it to download a unique DTMF tone on pressing the second button.
I'm sorry that you have had a bad experience. But in our case we want to try out the feasibility of this device. And as long as this device doesn't cost us much more than what we have in mind we are willing to try this out. Let me know what your terms and conditions are on this. I'm also sending you a link to the product that I looked at. May be it will give an idea as to how it's gonna work.

**broken link removed**

let me know

 

[BartSimpson]

Okay, I' ve had a look at the link and can't really see any major show-stoppers. Well, I can actually; but I'll ignore them for the moment It seems as though we sorta took a long way to get to the same product Although that one does look all nice and pretty being mounted inside a Credit-Card type of package.

I've got to ask one silly question though.... Why can't you just print some cards and get the person to dial the number and then enter their code ?

 

[Electrocrazed]

Not sure how everything is set up in the USA, but in canada the phone lines run -48V to -52V Dc and when you receive ring tone it is I believe 90V rms Ac. As was stated you would need to make sure that the service providers, line owners would not have a problem with you leaching off their lines.
By the sounds of it you are using voice recognition, so why not just have the people register with your software and then they can verify themselves with their own voice. Thats how we do it up here with the bell call in system, register you voice with the system, and everytime you call in you have to verify your voice with the system.
I dunno though looks like you want some nice little gadget, just what happens if the people start losing these? Do they have to pay for replacements?