# Caller ID and NCIDpop



## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Saw a post here about NCIDpop caller ID. Apparently it can be loaded on your computer and if you have one of your tivos serving as a Caller ID server it should also be able to pick up the caller ID info and display it on your computer screen. Well I've got NCIDD working on my system, one tivo is the server and four others use it to display caller ID, and it works great. I loaded up NCIDpop on my 'puter, but it displays a message "NCIDpop not connected". I may be running afoul of the last paragraph in the readme for NCIDpop which says "If you are running ncidd on a non-default port (i.e., not 3333), enter the server name followed by a colon and the port number, e.g., callerid.domain.name:1234."
But unfortunately, I've reached the limit on the depths of my knowledge.  
Anybody else out there got it working, or know anything about it? Thanks, and just for the benefit of any DDB enthusiasts, I have searched high and low both here and there, and on the Google hits for NCIDpop.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

1) Right click on the ncidpop tray icon
2) Select "Preferences"
3) Where the preferences dialog asks for "Hostname or Internet address of the ncidd server" enter the ip address of the TiVo running the ncidd server (and :<port number> if you changed it on the TiVo server)
4) Click on "Set"
5) Exit and then restart ncidpop

That's it...If you now select "Call History" from the ncidpop menu, you should see the caller ID history from your TiVo server.


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## alert5 (Nov 16, 2003)

It was my original post about ncidpop and as I indicated the application is shaky at best.

Since then I've been trying ncid.tcl and ncid.exe. If your interested the following findings are rather long but seem to be a promising alternative to ncidpop.

I have NCID.TCL setup for XP computers on the same network as the TiVo running the caller ID server provided by the Rbautch script.

Download the i386 NCID package from SourceForge. It includes the windows executables "ncid.exe" and "ncid.tcl".

To get callerID running in a minimized state that pops up on an incoming call, I used the TCL script with the following changes:

1. Modify ncid.tcl by adding the line "wm iconify ." without the quotes to the windows creation part of the script.

proc makeWindow {} {
frame .fr -borderwidth 2
wm title . "Network Caller ID"
wm protocol . WM_DELETE_WINDOW exit
wm resizable . 0 0
wm iconify . (Note there is a space between iconify and the .)
pack .fr

2. Modify ncid.tcl to include your default ncidd server IP address. The default "set Host" is for a local host of 127.0.0.1. This avoids the need to use a command line IP parameter when starting ncid.tcl.

# global variables that can be changed by command line options
set Host 192.168.1.109 (Note this is my TiVo server IP. Enter yours here.)
set Port 3333
set Delay 60
set Raw 0
set Program [list $ProgDir/$EXTPROG]
set All 0
set Verbose 0
set NoGUI 0
set Callprog 0
set CallOnRing 0

3. As an option add to the registry a run reference to the modified C:\ncid\ncid.tcl (no quotes required if you use the folder as shown) as a REG_SZ value at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN

Now whenever your system starts, you'll see a minimized "Network Caller ID" icon in the quick launch toolbar. You can click this and see all logged calls. When minimized it will pop open on a new incoming call. If you dont want caller ID running on startup, dont do this.

The modified TCL script will let you start up a minimized Network Caller ID any time you want. If you quit the process or close the window, youll have to start it again. A desktop shortcut to ncid.tcl will start it minimized again.

This will work for all computers in your local network if you install ActiveTCL on them. Copy the modified "ncid.tcl" script to them, and optionally make the registry hack in the location above. I have it on two network PCs with no modems installed and it has functioned just fine for several hours now. One is running XP Professional and the other XP Home.

You must have ActiveTCL installed so the wish84 process starts when activating the TCL script. The distinct advantage is you can easily modify the script to get Caller ID working the way you prefer on your PC. Initially starting the client minimized was important to me.

The "ncid.exe" file also works from a CMD prompt, but I could not get it started in a minimized state. You also have to use the command line parameter in a shortcut to point to the server IP.

If you dont want to mess with the script modifications or install ActiveTCL, then ncid.exe works fine too. NCID.EXE will always initially open in its defined window and you will have to minimize it to get off your desktop. A minor issue, I suppose, but I think it would tend to irritate or confuse other users of the PC.


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Dan Collins said:


> ....(and :<port number> if you changed it on the TiVo server)....


Thanks Dan. But didn't you read the part where I said that "I've reached the limit on the depths of my knowledge."?  
I'm not sure if I changed the port number on the tivo server, I don't recall doing that - but hey maybe I did? When I use filezilla to get into it it says its on port 21 at the top of filezilla. I tried that in your instructions but it didn't work.

Sorry, but I am out past my expertise, where do I find out what port the server is on? I have a netgear router and have looked in there, it has something on port forwarding and port triggering but that doesn't seem to be what I am looking for to determine what port my tivo server is using.

Thanks in advance for helping a fool. 

Alert5, thanks for your input, I may try that. I note that you use Port 3333, which the readme for NCIDpop seems to identify as the default port. But here I go demonstrating my ignorance again.


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## Finnstang (Sep 11, 2003)

port 21 is for ftp. Did you go in and edit the configuration file for ncid? If not then the port should be the same. If you find that you did change it, then you will use this format to add the port:

If the tivo running ncid as server is 192.168.1.10 and ncid is running on port 62, then you would enter 192.168.1.10:62 in ncidpop.

If you found the ncid config on the tivo once to change the port number, you should be able to find it again to see what you changed it to.


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Well, I hunted up the NCID.conf file and I didn't change the port. It is still set up to the default at 3333, (as well as the ncidd.conf file). I wonder if the fact that I am using one tivo as the server, and it is running ncidd, while the other tivos are not running ncidd, but ncid and getting their info from the server has anything to do with the problem.
I tired using one of the other tivos as the "server" for the ncidpop on the computer, (thinking that maybe ncidpop is looking at ncid rather than ncidd) but got same results.
This isn't a high priority for me, just one of those things that you would like to solve.  
Kind of like when my wife was annoyed by the "fakecall success" message showing up at 8:20 pm every night on the TV. So I thought no problem I'll fix it, so I spent tons of time sitting at the computer here researching it, and reading over and over to make sure that I wouldn't screw something up - I have several times in the past and have had to reinstall from scratch on more than one tivo. So it was getting late, but I finally figured it out. Set it up in cron to make the call at 12:20 am - late enough that I knew she would not be watching TV. Before I went to bed, I thought -well in order for this to take I need to reboot the box, so I did that and went to bed. Next morning got up, all excited to observe the results of my handiwork, went into setting phone and system information, and lo and beyold last call night before 8:20. WTF, I was positive I had it right, like I said I spent hours researching, made seveal notes, looked at the files numerous time before changing, a couple of time after changing. How could I have possibly screwed it up, why didn't fakecall do its thing last night at 12:20 am? Looked back in system information, checked the "up" time on the box, discovered that I had rebooted it at 12:30 am ten minutes after I had changed cron to do fakecall.  
Next day I checked it again and all was well.


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Not that it might matter to anyone else. But I finally got NCIDpop to work. Some steps that I took, not sure if all of em were necessary but after I did the last one it worked - so maybe they were.  
Opened a port 3333 in my windows firewall for NCIDpop.
On this desktop per Dan's advice in post #2 above in preferences when it asked for "Hostname or Internet address of the ncidd server" it worked with "livingroom" which for me is my server. But I seem to recall setting the names of the boxes up earlier in Windows hosts.
Conversely, on my laptop, where I had not set up the names of the tivos earlier it needed "192.168.0.2", and viola' it worked on the laptop too.


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