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Setting up Caller ID

By January 1, 2010September 26th, 2017Additional info

NOTE this webpage contains contents from 2009 and is outdated.

Requirements

To use caller ID with our Troi Serial Plug-in you’ll need this:

  • Caller ID service from your local telephone company
  • A modem or hardware device that supports Caller ID
  • A serial port which the Serial Plug-in can connect to

The first is required as only your local telephone company can supply this data. The second is required so that the data sent by the telephone company can be passed to software programs for processing.

Many current modems offer support for Caller ID. The key question is always what setup string to use to enable Caller ID (virtually every modem disables Caller ID as the default).

Modem initialization Strings

For most modems, the string AT#CID=1 will enable Caller ID. On some voice based modems the string is AT#CLS=8#CID=1. Look in the user’s manual for your modem to see if any setup string is referenced or mentioned. So the most common setup strings are:

AT#CID=1
AT#CLS=8#CID=1
AT#CID=2
AT%CCID=1
AT%CCID=2
AT+VCID=1
AT#CC1
AT*ID1

Testing Caller ID

The best way to set it up is to use a terminal data program

on Windows 95

On Windows 95 the HyperTerminal program can be used.
To use HyperTerminal do the following:

  1. Select “HyperTerminal” by navigating through the Start button to “Programs,” then “Accessories,” then “HyperTerminal”
  2. Double click on “hyperterm” or “hyperterm.exe”
  3. Name the new connection “test,” and select OK
  4. Change the “connect using” to Direct to COM X, were X is the COM port used by the Caller ID device
  5. Click on OK on the screen for port settings

on Mac OS

Use the ZTerm terminal program, which is free and can be downloaded from here.

To use HyperTerminal do the following:

  1. Install ZTerm
  2. Double click on “ZTerm”
  3. To change to the serial port used by the Caller ID device, press SHIFT during startup.

Testing the modem

To test your modem, do the following:

  1. Type the string ATZ, (OK should appear on the screen)
  2. Enter the Caller ID string to be tested, (AT#CID=1 for most modems)
  3. If OK results, continue; If ERROR results the modem may not support Caller ID; try a different setup string
  4. Have someone call you and watch the terminal screen
  5. If Caller ID is working, you will see the word RING, followed by one or more additional data lines. The word RING will then continue to appear for each incoming ring.
  6. If Caller ID is not working, you will only see the word RING for each incoming ring. If this is the case try another setup string and go back to step 2.

The most common result, when Caller ID data works, is the following:

RING

DATE = xxxxx

TIME = xxxx

NMBR = xxxxxxxxx

NAME = xxxxxxxx

RING

RING

There are other formats as well. The key point is that other data generally appears between the first and second rings.
Some telephone companies, especially in other countries, ship Caller ID data in different formats.

Going from here

After you got Caller ID working with the terminal program, you need to add ScriptMaker Script steps to your database to properly initialize the modem and to parse out the returned data. You can use the CallerID.fp5 example file that comes with the download of Troi Serial Plug-in as a starting point.

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