Tropo Voicemail

This app is designed to replace your GSM phone's voicemail. Instead of a phone-based voicemail inbox, messages are transcribed and emailed with a link to the audio file.

Please note that I only spent a few hours writing this, so there may be bugs, and it's just a starting point that could be developed a lot further.

Requirements

Heroku account
Tropo account
FTP server with HTTP access
GSM phone with call forwarding

Setup

Heroku

git clone git@github.com:titanous/tropo-voicemail.git
cd tropo-voicemail
heroku create
heroku addons:add sendgrid:free
heroku config:add EMAIL=you@email.com
heroku config:add VOICEMAIL_URL=http://yourserver.com/voicemail/
git push heroku master

Tropo

Create a new application on Tropo, and point it to a new Hosted File with the contents of tropo-voicemail.rb. Make sure you change the constants at the top of the file to be real values. The FTP URL may not match the HTTP URL given above (you may need a public_html).

You now have two options. If you are in the US, then you can add a free USA Domestic number. Note that you probably want a number in your local calling area. If you aren't in the US or couldn't find a local number on Tropo, then you should get a SIP DID from a company like Voip.ms and forward it to the Tropo SIP URI.

Cell Phone

The last step is to use some GSM feature codes to setup conditional call forwarding. Dial each of these numbers on your cell phone and press Send:

*67*TROPO_PHONE_NUMBER# (forward if busy)
*61*TROPO_PHONE_NUMBER# (forward if not answered)
*62*TROPO_PHONE_NUMBER# (forward if out of reach)

The phone should show a message after each that says something about the conditional call foward being set. If for any reason you need to disable these forwards, use these codes:

##67#
##61#
##62#