EDIT
There is now a website for this project here Please post questions and problems at the end of this thread.
end edit

Hello,

I've written some software that takes the x11 api example application provided by Skype and uses it to connect to a yamamoto easy blue b2k box. (this should do all b2k boxes though)

The software is in 2 parts, 1 the usb deamon written by someone else, and 2 is a small gui that connects to skype and the usb driver and is written by myself.

DRIVER: here
The driver is a slight mod of the original available at the link below, all I changed was a chmod to the socket that gets created, this means that my gui can be run from a normal user. The link below is so you can ask them for help about getting it to work Please use my version for this application.
original: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/usbb2k-api/

To install the deamon download from the driver link above, extract, then run configure and make make then you need to run the application in src/usbb2k_api as root (do this on startup when its all working correctly). Test the driver first by using the simple program in the tools folder, the readme explains what to do for this, PLEASE read it and if you have problems look at the authors website.

To use my application download it from
SOFTWARE: here
extract the file and do the usual configure make make install.
To run the application type kb2kskype

If you want to have it minimized to the system tray use kdocker. (or an equlivant).

This software requires QT,kdelibs,libusb,automake,make,g++,gcc,.

USAGE
To use the software first start skype then launch kb2kskype. The application lets you change the mode of the box, and passes button presses from the phone to skype.

To make a call pick up the handset dial the number and then press the # key when your done hang up. If you make a mistake hang up the phone and pick it up again.

To change to pstn mode dial **# then hang up (not sure how to switch back again tho.)(any one have an idea?)

The box and phone should ring when you get an incoming call on skype, pick up the phone to answer the call.

KNOWN PROBLEMS
Skype for linux doesn't have speed dials yet and I'm not writing them. Please add them in the next build:)

My box currently doesn't work too well with alsa it locks up the sound after 1 call and requires skype to be restarted, using OSS is fine apart from a slight echo (I can live with that!)

If you spot any bug or have feature request post here, I might get round to doing them at some point but I quite busy with work at the minute.

Feel free to edit the code yourself and improve it I haven't had the time to put the effort in, but it works for me on FC5, also on FC6.

Regards

Simon Dible

p.s. Thanks to the guys at skype for the demo application, good choice with the x windows messageing I like it.) and thanks for the guys who wrote the b2k driver I'll get round to emailing you about the socket permissions at some point!!

This post has been edited by Simon_6162: Fri Jan 26 2007, 14:57

Note that the link in the post above has been updated to fix some bugs i found. These are:

The main window now minimises on hang up.
Skype cancels outgoing calls when you hang up the phone.
The change to pstn now works.

awesome, works great with my FT-102 in gentoo.

thanks !

Hi, you replied to my thread (http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=69319), so I thought I'd reply to yours.

I tried out your app before starting to write my own -- actually you inspired me . Your program is nice, but I wanted something without any extra dependencies (Qt, kdelibs). I also plan to keep mine as a text-mode app, and without audio controls. (I favor the Unix philosophy that a program should only do one thing and do it well, and there's already alsamixer.)

Another reason for writing my own app is because I wanted to make use of D-Bus. I plan to add the option to use X11 messaging, though, partly because I suspect there might be a bug in Skype's D-Bus code. I suppose you haven't experienced a problem where Skype just stops sending protocol messages at some point? I hope not, and I hope the bug's in my code (so there's a chance to fix it).

I haven't studied your code thoroughly yet, but I plan to do so when I need to know how to send and receive X11 messages. In the mean time I think we should collaborate by sharing overall info and experiences. Here's what I'm working on now:

Handling Skype events -- especially simultaneous/overlapping calls -- in relation to B2K events is a minor logistical puzzle. I'm going to implement an option to answer an incoming call while the previous one is in progress, and to switch between several simultaneous calls. In my plan you could have one call active at a time, and the others would be held. So if you're talking on the phone (CALL 1) and another call starts ringing in the background (CALL 2), pressing * will issue SET CALL 1 ONHOLD and SET CALL 2 INPROGRESS. And when you again press *, call 2 will be put on hold and call 1 resumed. (The same applies for any number of calls, they will be cycled through in order. I will implement a call queue for that purpose.)

If you want to I can write up some pseudocode, or maybe I'll just put my unfinished code online soon -- work stuff has kept me tied up for the past few weeks, but I'll try to make time for this, too.

Oh, forgot to mention: I think I'm going to call my program SkypeGate. So that one's taken now.

Hi that was a very quick reply, its a shame my email isn't so quick at telling me there was a reply.

I'm glad I inspired you to start your app and I agree with your idea of doing it without the requirements for QT (it shouldn't need kdelibs that is probably me getting the automake script wrong! I will look into this).

I haven't noticed the d-bus bug you were talking of in x11, and I can't test it out for you in d-bus as I don't have the correct version of d-bus on my system, which was my reason for the x11 messageing. My x11 code was directly from the skype demo application and just reworked into some threads, but feel free to use what you like.

I like the plan for multiple calls I didn't think about that, also I have no idea what happens when you get a PSTN call and you are in the USB call, so any pointers on what to do there might be useful, I don't have a PSTN line any more so I can't do any testing. The one problem that i can see is that you might get issues when you start to use automated phone services (like calling your bank and you have to type in the card number etc.) as these require you to use the * and # keys to get around their menu systems, so maybe a command line switch for enableing call waiting features would be useful.

As for implementing it I guess you just need a call stack and loop round it and just store the next available slot and currently active slot in to other variables. place the current call on hold and answer the new one. Let me know how you get one with it.

Is there any chance you could show my what your b2k box is listed as in alsa by doing
cat /proc/asound/cards
I'm trying to find a card way of identifying the card number as mine moves about as i have a few usb sound card devices.

Good luck and good name for the program, let me know if you need any help or testing

Simon

This post has been edited by Simon_6162: Sun Dec 3 2006, 15:29

Seems to finally work for me too now ...

Switched to Kubuntu 6.10 and installed your driver-solution
and after some more hours of tweaking it seemed to work like a charm ...
(among minor hiccups I could mention are
that make install had some problems which I fixed with manual placement and linking of the binaries;
and that I had to do some shellscripting to get skype up and running at autologin under KDE and after some delay the B2K-control-app too)

one thing which was causing more serious troubles was that the alsa-mixer wasn't set up correctly initially ... and that OTHER mixers like kmix continually reset the values for the mic(s?) and speaker(s?)
[I don't know why everything is detected TWICE on the USB-B2K but it seems to work so it's a minor problem]
- so that basically noone could hear me and i not too well either ... But

* running alsamixer a first time - for both the normal soundcard (-c 0 in my case) and the USB-B2K (-c 1 in my case)
* running alsactl names (to save the hardware names)
* running alsamixer -c 1 once again to double-check that all four devices (two output, two input devices) were set up correctly
* saving the info with alsactl store 0 (and 1 respectively)
seems to have done the trick ...

will continue to test this solution, but it seemed to work exactly as I had hoped! thanks a bunch for it!!!!

links that could be useful to others:
http://knowledge76.com/index.php/Guide_to_Sound_Problems
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=MultipleCards

Thanks for the feedback and the links, I didn't realise you could use the alias to force the card number, that had been annoying me for quite a while now.

Could you post me the output of

CODE

cat /proc/asound/cards

I'm trying to find a card way of identifying the card number so i can add a mixer control, which will save others having the problem you had, with the sound levels. I have had trouble with kmix as well for this device but i did notice alsamixer worked fine.

Hi,

I have an USB SPEAKER PHONE USB-P4K. Using 'lsusb' it is identified as 'Bus 003 Device 006: ID 6993:b001 Freshtel FT-102 VoIP USB Phone', however when I connect it to USB, I get:

hiddev96: USB HID v1.00 Device [Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone ] on usb-0000:00:03.1-3

Anyway, is this supposed to work with your 'usbb2k-api'? When I connect to api, all I get is:

Connected.
SEND> RECV> USB DEVICE FOUND 010
RECV> HANDSET OFF

There is no reaction to commands (like 'RING 1') or pressing the keys on the phone...

Thanks, D.

PS: Forgot to mention that audio devices seem to work well - if I connect to other users via Skype, I can talk to them...

This post has been edited by danci1973: Tue Dec 12 2006, 15:49

Excellent work Simon

I got this working easily with Gentoo.. Using skype from portage (accepting ~x86 keywords, i believe the version i have install is masked - 1.3.0.53)

Works fine, except for one problem - when calling the test call, the robot (person im calling) sounds fine, but when i hear myself being played back, its hugely slow, my voice sounds really slowed down.

I've tested this a few times, with the same result.

Also, on my first call I clicked hang up on the phone instead of on skype first, which seemed kb2kskype to become unresponsive briefly (blacked out in beryl) and the crashed when i tried to minimize it.. But skype still works

Below is the console output from kb2skype:

CODE

~$ kb2kskype
Xlib: unexpected async reply (sequence 0x54d) !
In file kernel/qpixmap_x11.cpp, line 633: Out of memory
Segmentation fault

Edit/update:
I updated my kernel and after rebooting, the delay is gone.. I'm not sure if this is just coincidence from trying skype/rebooting but I did add OSS emulation.

However, I'm still have an odd issue where the 'dial tone' when I first pick up the phone stays there for duration of the call, instead of going away once skype starts dialing. I've tried starting the call, then picking up the phone, and other possible combinations.. But it will always be there over the call, unless kb2kskype crashed, or if I kill it while it's in USB mode.. then calls work perfectly, but no dial tone when I pick up the phone.. No big deal, it's kind of nice starting kb2kskype then killing it so I dont have an extra window around

I'm on xfce4 btw.

This post has been edited by d9t: Thu Dec 28 2006, 18:23

sure, here's the output of
cat /proc/asound/cards

CODE

0 [Live           ]: EMU10K1 - SB Live 5.1
                      SB Live 5.1 (rev.7, serial:0x80641102) at 0xa000, irq 11
1 [default        ]: USB-Audio - VOIP USB Phone
                      Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone            at usb-0000:00:07.2-2

for what it is worth - I'm posting them here - feel free to critizise, use, whatever

I THINK I finally set up the system nice and proper - including these shellscripts ...
(that is a server with one auto-logged in person where skype and this stuff should start automatically at boot and be shut down properly at a reboot)


setup:
Kubuntu 6.10
the USB-B2K software is installed to (or symlinked at least in) /usr/local/bin (too much of a FreeBSD user I guess ...)

the shellscript in /etc/init.d
(make sure that it is run in the proper runlevels! if you have chkconfig installed, use that. I had to resort to the graphical way in Kubuntu to make sure it is run wherever there is graphical environment and network)

CODE

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          usbb2k_api
# Required-Start:    
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:      
# Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:    
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: init the usbb2k_api
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/home/theuser/bin

do_start() {
    #
    # create the socket in /tmp
    #
        /usr/local/bin/usbb2k_api & > /dev/null 1>&2
    sleep 5
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    do_start
;;
  restart|reload|force-reload)
    echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
    exit 3
;;
  stop)
    killall kb2kskype > /dev/null 1>&2     
    killall skype > /dev/null 1>&2     
    if [ -e /var/run/usbb2k_api.pid ]; then
        kill `cat /var/run/usbb2k_api.pid` > /dev/null 1>&2
        sleep 5
        rm /var/run/usbb2k_api.pid > /dev/null 1>&2    
    fi
    sleep 3    
    if [ -e /tmp/usbb2k.sock ]; then
        rm /tmp/usbb2k.sock > /dev/null 1>&2
    fi
    exit 0
;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: usbb2k_api [start|stop]" >&2
    exit 3
;;
esac

placed a symlink in /home/theuser/.kde/Autostart
to
/home/theuser/bin/skype.sh
which goes as follows:

CODE

#!/bin/bash

/home/theuser/skype/skype& > /dev/null 1>&2
sleep 20
/usr/local/bin/kb2kskype& > /dev/null 1>&2
sleep 5
exit 0

maybe trivial - but maybe someone has a need for it
(and of course theuser is not called theuser here ...)

This post has been edited by alatariel: Sat Jan 13 2007, 19:31

alatariel
Thanks for the shell start scripts they look nice, I'll try them later.

I plan to set up a site later this week with some of the info from this board on, I'll post a link to this thread on it, and use your scripts as well if you don't mind.

I have a new version that adds sound control so it now does everything the windows app does. I'll post this later in the week as well. To do the sound control it calls amixer on the command line so you will need this installed if you want sound controls, but it isn't a requirement!

Thanks for the feedback on the device names that was what I was hopeing for!

d9t the dial tone goes away when you press a key on the phone. This is the hardware and i can't work out how to fake a key press to fix this, so if you dial echo123 on the skype interface just press 1 on your phone and the dial tone goes off. Also are you still getting the crash problem? I know what might be causing this but its a pain to fix and I haven't had it happen to me more than once.

One thing I will say is I use kdocker so the app isn't on the screen the whole time it sits in the system tray.
see http://kdocker.sourceforge.net/ there are other simillar progs around as well.

CODE

kdocker -l kb2kskype

danci1973
The usbb2k-api isn't my code so I don't fully know how it works I put the link for the origional authors in my first post, for what you say it does sound like it should work, but as I don't have that phone I can't really try. Have you tried sending the command to switch to usb mode first? eg. using api_connect type SWITCH USB then try RING 1.

EDIT:
I just looked on the usbbk2-api web site and there is mention of the p4k and the use of an extra module first see here , maybe give that a try and if you want any extra commands sending from skype to it let me know what they are and I can add them.


Simon

This post has been edited by Simon_6162: Mon Jan 8 2007, 15:15

I'm looking forward to the info as I would love to get skypmate running on my ubuntu system.

Thanks for the work you all have done on this.

Hello!

do you know if your sofware runs with 06e6:c31c Tiger Jet Network, Inc, a usb adapter sold by www.cuphone.com? i already have sound correctly, but cannot dial and the linux driver they provide doesn't work under ubuntu.

thanks in advance,

Paolo

Hello!

do you know if your sofware runs with 06e6:c31c Tiger Jet Network, Inc, a usb adapter sold by www.cuphone.com? i already have sound correctly, but cannot dial and the linux driver they provide doesn't work under ubuntu.

thanks in advance,

Paolo

I don't think it will assuming that the 06e6:c31c is the usb product id. This driver looks for the device listed below. You could try changing it to your vendor/product id but I doubt it will be that simple.
#define telbox_idVendor 0x6993
#define telbox_idProduct 0xb001

alatariel
Thanks for the shell start scripts they look nice, I'll try them later.

I plan to set up a site later this week with some of the info from this board on, I'll post a link to this thread on it, and use your scripts as well if you don't mind.

Sure, feel free to use them
you might have to edit them a bit though, for example I guess it's not need to sleep THAT much on faste systems
I could mail you a link to a document I've written where I have tried to summarize how I managed to set up the stuff I needed ...

This post has been edited by alatariel: Sun Jan 14 2007, 01:31

alatariel that would be useful my email address is in the source code. The site I have set up is quite biased towards fedora as thats all I have, so i will add in your notes.

The site is now on sourceforge at
http://kb2kskype.sourceforge.net/index.html

There is also a new version of k2bskype and the usbb2k-api with some bug fixes like the dial tone now goes on and off and I've added in ring tone support that was already in the driver. There is also a volume control although it isn't the best. You will need to remove the old version of usbb2k_api and install the latest version. You should be able to install kb2kskype over its self without any problems

I also changed your init scripts slightly. let me know if they cause you any problems. and let me know of any new bugs i might have caused.

Simon

Simon: you should have gotten some mails now ... they DO cause some troubles
and I still can't rely on the system booting correctly it seems ... more often than not I either get some weird notions in the logfiles from the yealink driver itself or else programs like yours or skype might crash ...
it's basically a plain vanilla Kubuntu fresh install (re-installed yesterday to try some theories) with most of the "office" and "gaming" and "graphics/multimedia applications" stuff removed ...


and BTW, my telbox is this one ...
http://www.clasohlson.se/Product/Product.aspx?id=386735
a grey one, but they do sell it under their own name with a custom information leaflet ...

edit: I might add that NetBSD (in the form of the ghost4unix/g4u-NetBSD-based cd) found the device as

uaudio0 at uhub1 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0: Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone, rev. 2.00/0.00, addr 2
uaudio0: audio rev. 1.00
audio1 at uaudio0: full duplex, independant
uhiddev0 at uhub1 port 1 configuration 1 interface 3
uhiddev0: Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone, rev. 2.00/0.00, addr 2, iclass 3/0
uhid0 at uhiddev0: input=16, output=16, feature=0

(looking through the code in both projects though I guess it will get HARD to port to FreeBSD or any other BSD :-/, but well, as lonkg as I could get the server working under anything NOT Micro$oft I'd be glad ...)

This post has been edited by alatariel: Sun Jan 14 2007, 17:25

Note that the link in the post above has been updated to fix some bugs i found. These are:

The main window now minimises on hang up.
Skype cancels outgoing calls when you hang up the phone.
The change to pstn now works.

hi simon: thanks for having written this. the yeatech skypemate is useless, because it requires a 32bit (not a 64bit) machine.

you may not want to make the install more robust, in which case you may want to ignore this email. I am running gentoo with kde 3.5 as my main window manager, and everything is installed. I believe I have the headers---after all, I compiled kde on this machine. I believe the headers sit in /usr/kde/3.5/include/, my global KDEDIRS path is /usr/kde/3.5:/usr:/usr/local. (I also tried setting KDEDIR.)

<pre>
checking for Qt... libraries /usr/qt/3/lib, headers /usr/qt/3/include using -mt
checking for moc... /usr/qt/3/bin/moc
checking for uic... /usr/qt/3/bin/uic
checking whether uic supports -L ... yes
checking whether uic supports -nounload ... yes
checking if Qt needs -ljpeg... no
checking for rpath... yes
checking for KDE... configure: error:
in the prefix, you've chosen, are no KDE headers installed. This will fail.
So, check this please and use another prefix!
</pre>

This is not terribly informative. kb2kskype is also the first kde app with which I have encountered such a problem. If I can help trying out different things, please drop me an email to ivowel@gmail.com

regards,

/ivo


--- someone should also write a list of all the things that should be in place for these VOIP phones to work. it is a big trial and error. so far, I think I have learned the following:
<ul>
<li> use a recent kernel. 2.6.19 will work. enable the yealink driver (CONFIG_USB_YEALINK). enable the usb sound driver (CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO). [add some user diagnostics to check that this has been accomplished. if not, describe to the novice how to do this.]
<li> make sure you have an artsd (or equivalent) daemon working for skype's audio. [add some diagnostics to tell the user how to check that this has succeeded, too.]
<li> get kb2kskype to work.
</ul>

you may not want to make the install more robust, in which case you may want to ignore this email. I am running gentoo with kde 3.5 as my main window manager, and everything is installed. I believe I have the headers---after all, I compiled kde on this machine. I believe the headers sit in /usr/kde/3.5/include/, my global KDEDIRS path is /usr/kde/3.5:/usr:/usr/local. (I also tried setting KDEDIR.)
<pre>
checking for Qt... libraries /usr/qt/3/lib, headers /usr/qt/3/include using -mt
checking for moc... /usr/qt/3/bin/moc
checking for uic... /usr/qt/3/bin/uic
checking whether uic supports -L ... yes
checking whether uic supports -nounload ... yes
checking if Qt needs -ljpeg... no
checking for rpath... yes
checking for KDE... configure: error:
in the prefix, you've chosen, are no KDE headers installed. This will fail.
So, check this please and use another prefix!
</pre>

The configure script was generated using automake and autoconf in kdevelop, I have no idea how to write them myself. I believe the solution to your problem would be to edit line 29151. The error report is the default for kdevelop, if its good for them, then I'm not changing it, however if the path change works i will add it in if this is the default for your distro.

/ivo
--- someone should also write a list of all the things that should be in place for these VOIP phones to work. it is a big trial and error. so far, I think I have learnt the following:
<ul>
<li> use a recent kernel. 2.6.19 will work. enable the yealink driver (CONFIG_USB_YEALINK). enable the usb sound driver (CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO). [add some user diagnostics to check that this has been accomplished. if not, describe to the novice how to do this.]
<li> make sure you have an artsd (or equivalent) daemon working for skype's audio. [add some diagnostics to tell the user how to check that this has succeeded, too.]
<li> get kb2kskype to work.
</ul>

The person in the post above has provided some good notes on this kind of thing I will get them on the website when I can, however there is quite a bit on there already. You don't need the YEALINK module in the kernel as far as I know or at least its not in fedora's and my box works. You do need SND_USB_AUDIO, this is in fedora so I forgot to mention it as I haven't had to compile a kernel since I last used gentoo 2 years ago;). I have tried this software on 2.6.9 kernel and it works so I don't really think the kernel has much to do with anything. Do you need arts? I don't see why skype works on fluxbox that doesn't have arts running, I could be wrong tho.

In the notes on the website I do make reference to calling echo123 for testing sound and also tell you to use alsamixer and nothing else for initial sound setup, espically not kmix and there are links to alsa pages on testing sound cards, why repeat their good advice! If you want to check the sound card is there 1. it will be listed in /proc/asound/cards and 2. you can also use usbview and check the first 2 nodes are grabbed buy SND_USB_AUDIO with the third either by the yearlink driver or by nothing.

Other requirements are on the install page of the website, although this needs updating I will do this when I have time. Feel free to post things in here for others !!

p.s. on ubuntu and maybe other distro's the kde apps go in /usr/local/kde/bin which isn't in the executable path so you need to symlink it to /usr/local/bin for the init script to work correctly or edit your PATH variable.

something like

CODE

ln -s /usr/local/kde/bin/kb2kskype /usr/local/bin/

And Do the same for the skype executable if its not installed in your PATH