WinCID Help Index

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WinCID allows you to use the Caller ID (CID) capabilities of your modem to monitor the origin of incoming calls.   WinCID will display the telephone number from which the call originated, the time the call was placed, and the date on which it was placed.  If your telephone company encodes name information into the signal, WinCID will display the name of the owner of the telephone number from which the call was placed.  Otherwise, you may attach a name to a telephone number for your convenience.

WinCID is shareware!  Please support development of programs like this one by registering your copy.  Its cheap!  Its fun!  You get better programs!  See the registration soapbox or the registration order form for more information.

How to use WinCID

Requirements for using WinCID

Setting up WinCID

The WinCIDdisplay area

Managing the database

Using the dialer

Bells and whistles

The caller log file

Customizing the WinCID display

Troubleshooting

Acknowledgements

Commands:

The RUN menu

The SETTINGS menu

How to contact us

Shareware registration:

registration soapbox

registration order form


Requirements for using WinCID

You must have a modem (or other serial-port device) capable of detecting and interpreting the Caller ID signal encoded on your telephone line.  Click here to see a partial list of modems which support Caller ID.

Your telephone company must supply the Caller ID signal.  Caller ID is not available in all parts of the US.  In addition, most local telephone companies charge an additional fee to encode the Caller ID signal with incoming calls.  Call your telephone company to find out more details.

You must not have any other communications software active when you run WinCID.  In order to monitor incoming calls continuously, WinCID must take control of the serial port on which your modem is connected.  Thus, no other program may have control of the serial port while WinCID is running.  This includes dial-up services (AOL, CompuServe, etc.), and FAX software.  If you need to use your modem while WinCID is running, select Stop from the Run menu.  Select Start from the Run menu when you want to resume CID monitoring


Modems which support Caller ID

This list is by no means complete.  It is merely a list of modems which we know to support Caller ID, as of April, 1995.  If you are not sure whether your modem supports Caller ID, check your manual or call the manufacturer.  Any modem purchased before 1993 likely does not support Caller ID.

Supra Modems:

Supra FAX/Modem 144

Supra FAX/Modem 144 LC

Supra FAX/Modem 144I (internal)

Supra FAX/Modem 288

Supra FAX/Modem 288I (internal)

Telebit Modems:

Telebit TeleBlazer

Zyxel Modems:

All Zyxel modems produced after 1993 support Caller ID

AT&T Modems:

AT&T Paradyne


Setting up WinCID

WinCID requires some information from you before it can work.  This information is entered via the communications dialog box, which can be activated by choosing General Settings from the Settings menu.

When the communications dialog box appears, you will have a chance to enter all of the information WinCID requires.

The General Settings dialog box

The communications dialog box has three main sections.  One is for settings related to your serial port, one is related to your modem itself, while the thrid is related to the dialer.

The Serial Port Section

The serial port section has radio buttons which let you select which serial port (COM port) to use, what bit rate to use in connections with the modem. You may have to change the COM port setting from its default value (COM2) to whatever COM port your modem is attached to.  If you are not sure which COM port is attached to your modem, look at the settings on other communications software which is already installed and working on your computer.

The Dialer Section

The options in the dialer section allow you to select whether the modem should use Tone or Pulse dialing.  Further, you can specify an additional string that should be sent as part of the dialing sequence.  For instance, if you need to press 9 to make local calls from your companys internal phone system and then have the modem pause before proceeding, place

9,

in the edit box labeled dialing prefix.

Also, the dialer needs to know what your local area code is in order to subtract it from local telephone numbers before they are dialed.  Enter this information in the edit box labeled Local Area Code.  Finally, you can select how long the banner screen will appear for incoming calls by entering a number (in seconds) in the edit box labeled Banner Time.

Modem Types

The modem section allows you to select which type of CID-equipped modem you have.  WinCID supports five modems by name, but it also allows you to use other CID-equipped modems by specifying initialization and result strings.  If you have one of the pre-defined modem types, just select the appropriate radio button for your modem.  If you have a modem which is not listed, try selecting Supra as your modem type.  A large fraction of all the CID modems made today use the same protocol.  Supra modems use this protocol, so that modem selection is a good place to start.

If none of the pre-set choices work for you, choose Other as your modem type.  When you click on the Other radio button, a dialog box will appear which allows you to enter information which will tell WinCID how to handle your modem.  This information is described below:

The string which will enable CID decoding.  This string will almost always start with the letters AT and then contain a short set of characters like #CID=1.  You should not enter anything other than the most basic initialization string!  If you have a choice between formatted and unformatted output, use the formatted output.  WinCID will not work with unformatted output.

The format of the CID output from your modem.  WinCID expects to find some sort of label on each line of output from the modem.  Most modems issue output which looks like this:

DATE = 0101

TIME = 0230

NMBR = 5125554519

NAME = John Q Doe

For output like this, the proper header strings to enter in the communications dialog box would be

DATE =

TIME =

NMBR =

NAME =

Be sure to enter a space between the 4-letter mnemonic and the = if it is present in the output from your modem.

If WinCID does not function properly with the default header strings, consult the manual for your modem, or call the manufacturer.  Alternatively, you can start the Windows terminal program, turn on the modem CID function (by typing the initialization string described above, followed by the Enter key), and then have someone place a call to your house.  By looking at the output from your modem, you should be able to figure out the proper header strings.


The WinCID display area

WinCID maintains a history list of all calls which have come while WinCID was monitoring the telephone line.  The list appears in a scrollable list box in the WinCID window.  The information which is displayed can contain the number from which the call was placed, the name of the person who pays for that telephone line, and the date and time at which the call was placed.  By default, WinCID will display all of these items.  If you wish to change which items are displayed, or if you wish to change the format in which they are displayed, see the topic Customizing the WinCID display

Just as some areas of the US do not have Caller ID information encoded into the telephone call, many areas do not encode the name of the person who pays for the telephone line.  WinCID allows you to enter a name to be associated with a particular telephone number.  If you double-click on an entry in the list box, a small dialog box will appear which will allow you to enter the name you wish to attach to the number.  All calls from that number will display that name in the future.  If your telephone company encodes name information into the call, you may override the name with one of your choosing.

Occasionally, calls will not contain Caller ID information, which means that your modem will be unable to decode the CID signal and provide the CID information.  It will still report that a call came in.  For such calls, WinCID will display the string No Number in place of the telephone number.  Most long distance calls contain no Caller ID information.  Also, telephone customers can request that their name and number be withheld from the CID signal.  The discussion above applies to both of these cases,

If WinCID is unable to match a name to a phone number, the string  No Name  will appear in the name field.

There are four buttons at the bottom of the display area.  These buttons access several convenient features of WinCID.

The Clear List button will cause WinCID to remove all entries from the list.  Also, WinCID will not retain this information after program termination (look for this ability in future versions!).

The Database button will bring up the WinCID database mangement dialog box.

The Edit button will bring up the caller information dialog box for the record currently selected in the listbox of incoming calls.

The Dial button will make WinCID  dial the number from the incoming call selected in the caller listbox.

The Sleep button will make WinCID go to sleep, releasing the serial port for other applications, and minimizing the WinCID window.  When you want to re-start WinCID, re-open the window, and pick Start from the Run menu, or press the Wake button (the Sleep button will change its label to Wake when WinCID is sleeping!)


Managing the Database

WinCID allows you to keep a database of information about the people who call you.  Records in the database are arranged by telephone number, and can include information such as the names and addresses.  Of course, you dont have to enter any of this information, but it sure makes WinCID more useful and fun to use!

There are two main ways to add new records to your database.  The easiest on is to wait until someone calls you (while WinCID is running, of course!).  Then the WinCID display area will show their call.  If you double-click (with the left mouse button) on the entry which interests you, the caller information dialog box will appear, already containing the phone number for this call.  Then you can enter the information you want to have recorded.

The other way to add new records is to press the Database button found below the main WinCID  display area, or to select the Manage database option from the database menu.  The Manage Caller Database dialog box will appear.  It has several buttons:

New	This button will add a new record to your database, and bring up the caller information dialog box, allowing you to fill in the fields.

Edit	If you select an entry from the listbox and press this button, the caller information dialog box will appear, allowing you to edit this record.  Double-clicking on an entry in the listbox will do the same thing.

Delete	If you select an entry from the listbox and press this button, WinCID will remove the record from your database.

Dial	If you select an entry from the listbox and press this button, WinCID will dial the phone number which goes with the record you picked.

When you delete entries from your database, WinCID  does not actually delete the information; rather, it makes the space occupied by the deleted entries available for later use.  If that space is never used, your names database can grow very large. If your database grows too large, you may wish to select Compress Database from the database menu.  Selecting this option will cause WinCID  to remove all deleted entries from your database.


The Caller Information Dialog Box

The caller information dialog box is where you enter or edit the records in your caller database.

Here is a short description of the fields in each record, and what theyre used for:

Number	The telephone number is the most crucial field in any record.  The database is searched by telephone number!  Be sure to get this one right!

First Name	The first (given) name of the caller

Last Name	The last (family) name of the caller.  These two fields are important if you want WinCID to tell you who is calling!

Address	The address of the caller

City

State/Province

ZIP/Postal code

Local Call?	This field tells WinCID whether this call is a local call, so the dialer will know whether to dial 1 before the phone number.  This field is only examined if the area code of the phone number is the same as your local area code.  You can enter your local area code in the General Settings dialog box.

Page for	If you have are using paging services and

this call?	have chosen to be paged only for selected calls, this check box is where you tell WinCID that you want to be paged if this person calls you.

WAV file	If you select Audio Announce from the Settings menu, WinCID will play an audio file associated with each caller who is on record in the database.  The WAV File field is where you specify which file should be played.  You can type a path and filename in by hand, or you can press the Browse button to select a file with the mouse.  WinCID will play only proper Windows WAV files.

Last Call	WinCID tracks when people call you.  Each time a call comes from someone in your database, the proper record will be updated automatically with the time and date of the call.  The date and time of the last call from this caller are displayed in the Last Call fields.

Number of	WinCID also tracks how many times each

calls	person in the database has called you.  This information is displayed in the Number of Calls edit box; you may set it to any value you wish.


Using the Dialer

WinCID has a built-in telephone dialer which uses your modem to dial telephone numbers.  There are two ways to use it.

First, there is a button labeled Dial on the main WinCID display area.  If you select a call from the list of incoming calls (by clicking once with the mouse button) and then press the Dial button, WinCID will dial the number for you.  A message box will appear which tells you to pick up your telephone and press the OK button.  Merely pressing the <Enter> key on your key board will work, as well.  Be sure not to hit the OK button or press <Enter> before the modem is finished dialing the number!

You may also have WinCID dial numbers by selecting them from the Manage Database dialog box, brought up by pressing the Database button in the WinCID display area.  When this dialog box is visible, select the record you wish to dial and press the Dial button.


Bells And Whistles

WinCID has several nifty features which use the Caller ID signal.  Check out these cool gizmos, all of which can be found under the Settings menu item.

Banner display of CID info

Paging Services

VoiceAnnouncement of phone numbers

Audio announcement of incoming call

Setting your computer time from the CID info


The caller log file

WinCID records every incoming call in a file called wincid.log.  This file can be found in WinCIDs working directory.  The file contains the number, time, and date of the call, and also any name (from the CID signal, or from the database) information available at the time the call was logged.

This file may be deleted at any time; WinCID will create a new wincid.log when the next call comes in.


Customizing the WinCID display

You may customize how WinCID displays the Caller ID information by selecting Display Formats from the Settings menu.

Display Formats

The display formats dialog box allows you to customize the appearance of the WinCID display area.  The dialog box contains three main areas.

The first of these consists of eight radio buttons which let you select how you would like to see the date displayed.  Each button shows how the date January 1, 1995 would appear.

The second area consists of three radio buttons for how you would like to have the time displayed.  Each button shows how the time 5:30 pm (17:30 hours) would appear.

The last area consists of four checkboxes which allow you to select which fields WinCID will display.  An X in a box means that WinCID will display that item.  Each item may be selected or deselected individually.


The Run Menu

The Run menu allows you to start and stop the monitoring of your incoming calls.  By default, WinCID will start monitoring calls as soon as the program starts.  It will attempt to take control of the serial port and open a connection to your modem.  If any other software has control of the serial port (or if WinCID is unable to take the serial port for any reason), WinCID will display a message informing you of the problem, and will remain idle. Once you have exited your other software (or made it relinquish its hold on the serial port), you may tell WinCID to try again by selecting Start from the run menu.

If you want WinCID to give up the serial port so some other application can use it (thus suspending call monitoring), select Stop from the run menu.  Select Start when you are done with your other software and are ready for WinCID to resume monitoring incoming calls.

If for some reason your modem loses power during a WinCID session (or if it stops sending CID information for any reason), you may reinitialize it by selecting Initialize Modem from the run menu.


The Settings Menu

The settings menu contains two items which let you control the operation of WinCID.

The General Settings menu item is where you go to tell WinCID how to find your modem, how to nteract with it, and how the dialer should work.

The Display Formats menu item is where you go to tell WinCID how you would like to see the Caller ID information displayed.

There are also five bells and whistles  menu choices under the Settings menu.  They are Show Banner,   Pager Settings,  Voice Announce,  Audio Announce, and Set Computer Time.


Show Banner

The Show Banner  menu item is a toggle. If the Show Banner choice is active, WinCID will display a large window on your screen for each incoming call.  In the window will appear text telling you about the call: the telephone number of the caller and the name (if the data is encoded in the CID signal, or if you have entered the name into the database)  The window will appear for a few seconds and then vanish, or you can click anywhere in the window to dismiss it.  You can change the length of time that the banner will remain in the General Settings dialog box


Paging Services

If you have a digital pager, WinCID  has the ability to page you in response to incoming calls.  If a call comes in for which WinCID  should page you, WinCID  will dial your pager service number, and enter the telephone number of the person who called you.

WinCIDs  paging services are available only to registered users!  If you want this feature, you will have to register your copy of WinCID!   See the registration order form  or the registration soapbox for more details.

You can set up WinCIDs  paging services by selecting the Pager Settings... choice from the Settings menu.

When you do this, a dialog box will appear.  The first thing you can select is when WinCID  should page you.  You can choose Never page me, which means exactly what it says.  You can choose Always page me, which means that WinCID  will page you for every call which comes in with a valid CID signal.  You can also choose Page for selected calls.  You can probably guess what this does.

To tell WinCID which calls should result in a page,  you  must use WinCIDs database management features.  Each entry in the database can be tagged for paging, much like you tag them for playing specific WAV files.  In the caller information dialog box is a check-box labeled Page for this call?  If you

check this box, WinCID will know you want to be paged when that person calls you.

You must also tell WinCID  how to page you.  You do this by entering a string into the Pager telephone number edit box.  This string should start with your pager number, and end with a number of commas.  The commas tell the modem to pause for a moment before proceeding (about two seconds per comma, for most modems).   This is necessary because WinCID has no way of  knowing when your paging service has picked up the phone line.

To determine how many commas are needed, start with a small number (like three) and then press the Test button.  WinCID  will try to send you a page, telling you to call number 999-9999.  If you get the page, then everything is set up correctly.  If not, try increasing the number of commas to allow your paging service more time to pick up the phone before the modem tells them which number to page you with.

If you need to dial a prefix in order to get an outside extension, start with that prefix, followed by a comma or two.  For instance, if you need to dial 9 before you can get an outside line, and your pager service number is 123-4567, your entry in the edit box should be something like

9,,1234567,,,

Finally, if your pager service needs a # or a * to know to send the page, enter this in the Suffix edit box.  Also, you can put something special in there (like 111 or 999) so you can tell that the pages youre getting come from WinCID and not directly from the caller.


Voice Announce

WinCID  can read you the number of the person calling you!

The Voice announce choice in the Settings menu is a toggle which tells WinCID  whether you want to have the phone number of incoming calls read aloud for you.  If a check appears next to the voice announce menu choice, WinCID will read the numbers out loud!

Voice announcement is available only to registered users!  If you want this feature, you will have to register your copy of WinCID!   See the registration order form  or the registration soapbox for more details.


Audio Announce

Audio Announce is another toggle.  If it is active, WinCID will play a .WAV file for the incoming call.  You can select a different WAV file for each person in your caller database.  WinCID will not play any audio for calls from numbers which are not in the database.


Set Computer Time

The phone company keeps great time, right?  Why not set your computer's time from the time stamp encoded in the CID information?  Your computer will never be more than one minute off of the correct time! You also wont have to worry about daylight savings time, etc.

If the Set Computer Time option if toggled on, WinCID will attempt to use the time stamp from the incoming call to upate the system time of your computer.  If WinCID has trouble understanding the time stamp, it will not set the time.

Since the time stamp in the CID signal only includes hour and minute information, WinCID can set your system time to an accuracy of only one minute.

We advise you to use this option with caution.  Its a very useful gizmo, but its also very easy to have your computer's time get screwed up this way.  Be sure to verify that WinCID is functioning properly before you turn on the Set Computer Time option!

Gradient Computing disclaims all liability from any damages caused by using this feature.  Use it at your own risk!


Toggles

Toggled menu items have two states: checked and unchecked.  If a toggle is unchecked when you select it, a check will appear next to it from then on.  Select it again, and the check will vanish.  The presence of a check indicates that the choice is currently active; if the check is absent, the menu choice is inactive.


Troubleshooting

Several things can keep WinCID from functioning properly.  Here is a partial list of things to check if WinCID does not work for you.

If your modem is not on the list of supported modems, try selecting Supra as your modem type.  A large fraction of all the CID modems made today use the same protocol.  Supra modems use this protocol, so that modem selection is a good place to start.

If WinCID complains that it can not open the COM port, first make sure no other communications programs (terminal programs, FAXing software, etc) are running.  If you still have problems, check to make sure thatWinCID  is pointing to the correct COM port.  If youre not sure which COM port to use, exit WinCID, bring up a communications program which you know to work properly with you system, and look at its COM port setting.  Then exit that program, fire up WinCID, and enter that setting into the modem settings dialog box.

If WinCID runs without complaining about the COM port or the modem, but fails to receive caller ID information from your modem, make sure that you have told WinCID to use your modem in the modem settings dialog box.  If you have selected the right modem and WinCID still does not work, try telling WinCID to use the Other modem, and enter the initialization string and the field header strings by hand.  See the Modem Types topic for detailed information on how to do this.  If you find that WinCID s default settings do not work for your modem, but you are able to set them by hand, please contact us with a description of the situation so we can fix it for you.

By default, WinCID  uses the following settings for communications with your modem: 9600 baud, no parity, and one stop bit.  If you need to use port settings other than these, there is a way to do it.  WinCID  does not provide a way for you to change these settings, but it does read the settings from the wincid.ini  file.  If you edit the file by hand, you can change any of the settings to be what you need.  Here are the fields you can change (and their default values):

ComPort=COM2

Baud=9600

Parity=0

DataBits=8

StopBits=1

ReadoutDelay=750

The only two which need explanation are the parity setting (0 = none, 1 = odd, 2 = even) and the readout delay.  The readout delay is the length of time WinCID waits after the first ring to read the Caller ID data from your modem (in milliseconds).  If WinCID  is not functioning properly, this number might need to be adjusted.  Start by making it longer, but it should never exceed 1250.


Acknowledgements

Gradient Computing gratefully acknowledges the bug reports (and efforts in resolving them) of Robert McElroy.  WinCID version 1.2 became a much-improved product due to Bobs help.

Direct user feedback is still the best way for software to improve!

Thanks, Bob!


Registration Soapbox

WinCID is shareware.  This means that the software is not free, but that you are invited to use it for a while before you pay for it.  You are, however, expected to pay for it if you want to keep using it.

Gradient Computing knows that most people never pay for shareware.  It annoys us to no end, because we spent our time and effort writing this program in the hopes that we would make a little money from it.  Before you say well, it was only your time..., we would like to point out that everyone on our development team is a professional software developer in some capacity.  When we spend our time developing a program like this one, we are spending time that we might have spent in our day jobs.  Thus, we have, in a sense, invested money into developing this software.

We invite you to use this program, to copy it, and to give copies of it to everyone you know.  We also invite you to pay our minimal registration fee if you like it!  Registration for WinCID is just $8, including shipping.

Registration gets you several things.  The first of these is the latest version of WinCID, with all of the cool features we wanted to put into this version but didnt have the time to do.    It also gets you the paging and  voice announcement features.

Registration gets you a version without the annoying nag screen!

Registration also delivers -- right to your doorstep -- the warm and fuzzy feeling of having done the right thing.

If you would like to register your copy of WinCID or order any of our other software, you can get a printed order form by clicking  here and then picking Print Topic from the File menu of this help screen.  Alternatively,  you can print the text file order.txt which should accompany WinCID.

Thank you for supporting the shareware concept!


WinCID Order Form

Gradient Computing also offers several solitaire games.  If you would like to see one in action, look for 4 Towers (towers11.zip) at the same place where you got WinCID .  If you like WinCID and trust us enough to order 4 Towers or our Gradient Solitaire Premium Package  (6 engaging solitaire games) sight unseen, you can do it on the order form below.  (The cost for this package is $15, shipping included.  That means that your cost is just $2.50 per game!)

Product Ordered (circle any that apply):	Cost:

Gradient Computing Software Order Form

WinCID registered version	  	  8.00

4 Towers registered version	  	  8.00

Gradient Solitaire Premium Package	 	15.00

Total	___________

Ship To:

Name:	_____________________________________

Address:	_____________________________________

       	_____________________________________

City:  	_____________________________________

State/Province :	__________________

ZIP/Postal Code: _____________

Country:	____________

Where did you get your copy of WinCID? ___________________________

Are there any features youd like to see in future versions of WinCID?

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Please make all checks out to Gradient Computing,  All checks should be in $US, drawn on either a United States bank or an international bank.  International Postal Money Orders are OK, too!

Send your order to:

Gradient Computing

P.O. Box 4549

Austin, TX 78765-4549


Contacting us:

We'd love to hear from you!  If you have questions about how to install or use this software, or if you have suggestions for future versions, complaints about this one, or if you just want to write and say Howdy!,  you can find us at

Gradient Computing

P.O. Box 4549

Austin, TX 78765-4549

Or you can write us electronically at

GradientC@aol.com


Gradient Computing is a small Austin--based software development firm which writes Windows games and other applications.  The developers at Gradient feel that too much of today's software (most especially shareware) is horrendously overpriced.  Gradient tries to develop software which is inexpensive, carefully crafted, and fun to use.

If you would like to contact us with suggestions, comments, or even complaints, we would love to hear from you.  Drop us a line at

Gradient Computing

P.O. Box 4549

Austin, TX   78765

You can also write us via email at

GradientC@aol.com