Video Calling Arduino *kinda solved*

Projects General Guidance
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Hey so I've come up with a crazy project from my neighbor (a nice old lady). So for a while, every now and then I go over to my neighboors house and setup my laptop on her TV with a webcam and all and let her Skype her family who live too far away to visit usually. And well for her birthday this year I'm giving her an older comptuer of mine. heres what I want to do for the project though.

What I'm building is a system, where with the press of a single button, (out of like 6 buttons, so like speed dials) she can do a skype call to her relatives with this computer. The comp will be hooked up to her TV (so its easy to see) and has a webcam setup facing her living room (they have 2 in the house, the normal one, and the family room, which people dont go in often, but this will be setup in)

Way it works, so the computer will be in hibernate mode, sitting there waiting. Walk into the room from either door, and it trips an IR beam by the door, which sends a signal to the power button on the computer to pull it out of hibernate and get ready (there will be plenty of time with her walking over to her chair). Then she can turn the TV on regularly, and it works normal or she sets it to channel 3 (she can handle that) which will be the output from the computer. Then using one of the several buttons (each large and labeled so she can read) it places a skype call to the person chosen, and goes through, fullscreens the videochat and all, then she enjoys watching her grandkids play with legos 2000mi away.

Now the buttons and the IR beams, are all done. the computer is over there and walking into the room will pull the comp out of sleep. And within the serial (using serial.print()) when you hit each of the buttons, sends a line that says like "call carol" or "call george".

My problem now is getting the computer to read those and put them into action. I've read a lot about peopel suggesting "Processing" as a language to use to program arduino related things that work on the computer itself. I've gone and played with a few of the tutorials (very graphically oriented of a programming language eh?) And I'm sure that with any language one can make a program that will read the serial port, and then click some buttons in series on the desktop.

What I'd like to know. I haven't done much with processing yet, I was planning on diving in fullscale tomorrow after my last final, and learning what can be done with that language. Should i go ahead and try the processing? Or would it be better to knuckle down, and actually go and learn regular C++ or Java or something to make it happen?

Yeah sorry not really an arduino question, but its interfacing with an arduino so I figured it might be valid.

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The real question is what to do with the data after it is fetched from the serial port. Processing or C++ or C# or VB or any of a host of other tools can be used to read and parse the serial data. When the application knows that "call carol" came in, what then?

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Think GOBetwino can be a help here - Gadgets og teknologi | Dansk Tech Blog - Mikmo -

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PaulS:
The real question is what to do with the data after it is fetched from the serial port. Processing or C++ or C# or VB or any of a host of other tools can be used to read and parse the serial data. When the application knows that "call carol" came in, what then?

You'd have to write a program to drive Skype via its COM API. I haven't done it, but it looks straight forward.

I would have thought that using Gobetwino to start your 'skype launcher, would be simple enough. If you design your Arduino+sketch to emulate a keyboard, you might even be able to do it directly using a windows hotkey, which would save you needing to explicitly deal with sleep issues (the computer would wake on input).

Is it out of the question to have your friend actually use the computer directly? That would make it possible for her to receive video calls as well as make them. If the PC is set up right this can be made quite simple.

If you can budget it, I highly recommend using an iPad for this - no doubt there are other tablet PCs that would do just as well. The sound quality and recording sensitivity blows a normal PC into the weeds, and since you're much closer to the screen and camera you can also see and be seen far better.

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Hmm actually I think it could be done easy with the Gobetwino after looking at it.
I already have the comp waking automatically when you walk into the room in particular though. I'll play with this software though, if I can work it around to do a hotkey for the keyboard that should be good.

On the note of can she use a computer, no, shes 96 years old and can't see well. Thats why I was setting it up so that shed have it running using her TV as the screen so she can see better. But I'm not dealing with trying to teach her to use a computer or an IPad (which she wouldn't be able to see well enough either, I've tried). Took me 6 months to get her able to use her cable box.

and after testing out the camera because I've been going over for months and setting up using her TV and a webcam (fairly high quality). All her relatives have the IPad which is fine, but this old lady wouldn't be able to deal with that.

But thx for the Gobetwino. I'm pretty sure that that'll let me do what I need without having to learn to program a computer (though I should probably do that sometime anyways).

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If there are more questions, just lets us know and if it all workes we also like to hear it of course!

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Nikarus:
But thx for the Gobetwino. I'm pretty sure that that'll let me do what I need without having to learn to program a computer (though I should probably do that sometime anyways).

At the end of the day you have to run something on the PC to launch a skype call, and you will almost certainly end up writing that something.

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PeterH:
You'd have to write a program to drive Skype via its COM API. I haven't done it, but it looks straight forward.

Even easier, Skype allows a few command line arguments.