Hello, I am new to the community and new to the Arduino itself. While thinking of some practical applications I can use it for, one stuck out. My house has a security system, however we no longer pay for the service. I set off a smoke alarm today, which set off the entire system. There I found that it has an autodialer. Assuming the system still works correctly, what are the chances of me being able to:
Use the arduino (or anything for that matter) to find who and what the system is dialing out to, and
using the arduino to intercept this information, and send it in the form of a text/email/call/anything to a cell phone?
My first option would be to simply talk to the company you used to pay and ask how the system operates, what number it calls and how to disable it. They presumably get the calls and ignore them because you don't have a contact any more so they may be helpful.
Second option would be to set it off several times quite quickly at a known date and time and then look at the telephone bill.
You have said the system is using an autodialer which is why I am thinking in terms of a serial line, a modem and a telephone.
If neither of the above work and you have a PC with a RS232 serial port you can probably tap into the line between the security system to display what the system is sending to the modem.
If on the other hand you actually have a networked system, so there is no autodialing involved, you might use something like Wireshark to capture and decode the communications.
I would have thought you could unplug the auto-dialer from the phone line, and monitor what it is attempting to do.
In fact, I would guess the first thing it would do is try to "get a line" which I think involves lowering the resistance on the phone line (to get current flowing and thus a dial tone). This "get a line" should be detectable, and then you could use your Arduino to do something else instead.