New BT Charges and 1 hour phone calls. How to enforce them

[ian.bird@xxxxxxx]

Hi all

BT have just brought out their new charging policy for phone calls and a
lot of the savings are from keeping your phone calls under an hour. This
is not compatible with SWMBO so some electronic help is in order. Now, a
couple of questions.

1) If I want to force a hang-up can I fit a couple of relays in the phone
line and trigger these to open simulating the phone line having been
unplugged? This is for outbound calls only. I say two relays ignoring the
bell wire. Is there a better way of doing it?

2) Since I have a Meteor I might use this to identify the direction of the
call. I already have an application connected to the Meteor which logs all
the info into a database etc. so listening to the inbound data might prove
a problem. The application came with the Meteor so I don't have the source
or anything and I expect it doesn't write the log entries till the call
ends. Does anyone know if splitting the serial cable and simultaneously
connecting the send from the meteor to another serial port input will
enable me to listen to the data stream with my own application?

3) If listening to the Meteor proves a problem I can always attach some
special balanced BT relays into the phone line which trigger when a call
is made or received and work from there. The tricky bit then would be
determining the direction of the call, anyone any ideas here?

4) Finally, is it possible without spending loads of money to have the
computer conceptually  'pick up' another handset and give the warnings as
though they were another person on the line?

Of course there would have to be an override for those special occasions
but that should be simple enough.

Any ideas, thoughts folks.

Thanks

Ian


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