Making ISY aware of incoming cell phone calls via Bluetooth

[OverloadUT]

Here's an idea I hope you guys can help me figure out how to implement.

 

I want my ISY to be aware of when I have incoming calls to my cell phone. I'd like to do this without Jailbreaking (otherwise I would use Notify Pro so that I can have it work for my housemates' unjailbroken phones.

 

I figure the way to do this would be to have some sort of device that has bluetooth capability centrally located in the house (might need more than one if the range is too great), that can do something (like make a REST call to the ISY) when it detects an incoming call.

 

However, I have no idea what kind of device I should be looking for, or if this is even possible at all! I have a vague memory of some sort of re-purposed router that the HA community was all about, due to it having Bluetooth and its ability to be rooted to run linux.

 

Has anyone done this, or have any ideas on how to do it?

 

As a bonus, this would also work for occupancy sensing!

[Vyrolan]

For occupancy sensing, there is a thread about one solution that I think is among the best. There's so many fine uses of a router running DD-WRT, and that is one of them.

 

I'm not sure about the Bluetooth thing...it's range is pretty limited and your phone can't pair to more than 1 thing at a time and probably wouldn't handle switching very well. I just don't see Bluetooth as working well for this at all.

 

Another option would be if you used Google Voice...your computer could detect the incoming call. There's a lot of details to figure out, but it could work.

 

I'm assuming you don't carry your phone around and that's why you want ISY to alert you. If you sit your phone in a tray or something, that tray could be rigged with sensors to detect the vibration of it ringing or the light (most phones turn their screen on when there's an incoming call). I guess if it's going to sit still, the Bluetooth approach could work (similar sensor to detect light and/or sound from the Bluetooth device's ring indicator).

[OverloadUT]

Yeah, I've seen that occupancy sensing solution, but unfortunately the limitation of it only working if the user unlocks his phone upon coming home is not acceptable to me. I'm actually in the process of writing my own geofencing app for iOS to ping a custom API that will solve this problem.

 

As for bluetooth:

 

While at home, I don't need any of our phones to pair to a second device, so I would be okay with that limitation. I do carry my phone around though, so sensing the vibration wouldn't work. Plus I'd like to use the data that a bluetooth device should be able to get, such as who is calling, and eventually work that in to my home theater system (to display who is calling in XBMC for example).

 

What's killing me is that I swear I read about some router-sized device with wifi and bluetooth (might have been an actual router, might have not been) that people were buying on eBay and whatnot for Home Automation because it was an excellent way to get a cheap computer with bluetooth capability. But I have no idea what it was!