# Restrict Daily Call Times?



## LarryDavid (Jan 4, 2007)

I don't think this is possible on a bog standard TiVo but ... is there a way to restrict the daily call to certain times (7pm to 7am in my case) to be sure I get the cheaper rate? Its been going outside these times in the last few days.

Perhaps I should just unplug the phone line each morning and plug it in at night!


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## drgeoff (Nov 10, 2005)

There is some discussion about this here and subsequently in the same thread especially this.


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

The software in TiVo already prevents automatic daily calls during peak phone times on weekdays - always has.

To get a call during a weekday in the daytime you have to manually call.

It seems to have been done to keep TiVo call charges down.

But it may be set to the old 6pm to 8am slot.


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## johnscott99 (Sep 23, 2002)

There is a simple and obvious answer (like me - simple and obvious) unplug the TiVo phone cable every morning and back in every night.


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## LarryDavid (Jan 4, 2007)

Yes that's probably the easiest thing isn't it? 

As the call seems to schedule for 24 hours AFTER the last daily call FINISHES (or possibly in the nearest 'offpeak' defined block after that) I will try a forced daily call tonight after 7pm and see when it wants to do another call after that. If this works I can just keep an eye on it and force a daily call when I need to bring it back 'in line' so to speak.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

I was going to have a dig around and see if I can produce a mod to do this... when I get time 

Unless someone else is already working on it?

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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

LarryDavid said:


> As the call seems to schedule for 24 hours AFTER the last daily call FINISHES (or possibly in the nearest 'offpeak' defined block after that) I will try a forced daily call tonight after 7pm and see when it wants to do another call after that. If this works I can just keep an eye on it and force a daily call when I need to bring it back 'in line' so to speak.


I seem to recall that a forced daily call doesn't reset the schedule.

Which is to say, if Tivo says it's going to call at 1.00am and you force a call at 7.05pm, it will probably call again at 1.00am.

At least, that's my recollection.


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

If the scheduled call is due at 1am and your force a call at 7pm. The next call time stays at 1am until 1am arrives and then the display time is amended - but another call at that time does not happen.

And the same is the case on the new VM TiVo.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Ok this seems simple enough  Is there any way other than via manual prodding (e.g. Tivoweb module) or cron job, of starting a periodic script on the TiVo?

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## riggers (Apr 14, 2005)

If it's a shell script you can include the sleep command.

Within a shell script you can also use grep or sed on the system date output to run a command whenever you wish.

Bit rusty on unix but those are the ones that spring to mind.


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

This script will update the last call time to the current time and the next call to 00:00 GMT the next day. 

I've tried testing it briefly and it changes the relevant values in /mfs/Setup and sets the account status to 5-Lifetime. I got it from {cough} another database so feel free to mess with it.

EDIT: I was checking operation using the Tivoweb 'Phone' module, which by default doesn't display call times earlier than the last one set, so you couldn't set the 'next call' 7 days ahead then go back to 1 day. I've added to the zip file an amended phone.itcl with this feature commented out so the module always displays the values in /mfs/setup.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Best use cron - it's what it's for after all.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Ok, try this - http://www.tivoland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=701

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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

Looks pretty similar to the script I dug up but with useful tweaks! 

You mention on tivoland that tivoweb doesn't pick up the change, that's because the tivoweb module will not backdate timings. There is no logical reason for this, but this amended module corrects that behaviour so may be useful to you.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Thanks Trinitron - do you know how long I stared at that line of code but simply couldn't grasp what it was doing! (Whatever happened to comments in source code?  ). So Tivoweb won't refresh the db value unless a new call has been made. How silly! Oh well all I need to do is to add 1 second on to the last call time and that will fool TW into reloading from the db (but won't be too misleading w.r.t. the real time of last call). 

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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

The TW module stores all the values in an array, PHInfo. These will be persistent while the module is active, which is why they only change on a Tivoweb reload. 

For anyone else that's interested, the problem with the phone module is that it uses an 'if' function that compares the actual LastCallAttempt in mfs/Setup with the stored PHInfo(LastCallAttempt) and only updates if the real value is higher - so it's ok going forward in time but updates nothing if the real value is put back to an earlier time. That seems pointless to me, it should always reflect the real values.


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