General Questions

Q. I'm new to voipGauge and widgets, how can I get started?

A. VoipGauge is a widget built for the Yahoo! Widget Engine (formerly Konfabulator).  You can get started with widgets by visiting Yahoo!'s site: http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Your other requirements will be a Vonage-branded VoIP service, a PC running Windows or Mac OS.  See the system requirements information at Yahoo!'s site for further information.


Q. What's with the name change?

A. VoipGauge was formally known as VonageGauge.  The name has been changed to prevent any potential impression of an official afilliation with Vonage.  To be clear, there is none at all -- accept that the author is a long-time customer and advocate of the Vonage services. 


Q. I'm on a Mac, do I need to do anyting to my system or installation to make voipGauge work?
A. Nope, it should run right away!  The Mac OS X ships with a version of cURL that is already enabled to work with secure web pages via SSL, which voipGauge uses to work with your Vonage-account safely. 

 

Q. I'm on a Windows-box, do I need to do anything special to make voipGauge work?
A. Sadly, you do.  The Windows-version of Yahoo! Widget Engine doesn't ship with an SSL-enabled version of cURL, so you have to get one.  It's not so hard, just follow the directions here. 


Call Actions

Q. I've configured callActions™, but there's no status icon displayed, what's wrong?
A. voipGauge will not actually perform the line-status check unless there is a reason to do so.  If you have set your call actions to do nothing, then it will not bother to check the line status at all.  Sometimes people set theirs to pause iTunes only.  If iTunes isn't running, then the widget will no longer check the line status, until iTunes is active again.

 

Q. I'm having a lot of network problems since I've configured call actions, help!
A. voipGauge checks the line status by "scraping" a web-page from your router's configuration interface.  On some routers, this can be an intensive operation -- especially if you've set the widget to check frequently.  A value of 6-12 seconds for the check-frequency is recommended.  If you're having issues, try setting the frequency to a higher value.  Please note if your router has a web-page-based authentication form, you'll need to use a higher value for the "Check every:" setting as the widget actually needs to make 2 requests each time instead of one.

 

Q. Call Actions sounds cool! Will you support my VoIP router?
A. It may already!  Try setting the "Router Type:" to one of the existing ones first and send me a note if it already works and on which setting.  So, for example, if the widget works for your XYZ router when the preference is set to use router type ABC, send me a note to let me know and I'll add it properly to the menu and the code.
 

Q. I've tried the above, and it still doesn't seem to support mine, can you add support? 
A. I would like to.  However, since I don't own your router, I'll need some very specific things from you:

1. I need to know the model number of the router (this should be obvious :)

2. I need to know if your router uses "Basic Authentication" or some web-page-based form to collect your credentials.  If your router pops up a separate window for your credentials, this is Basic Authentication.  Let me know this.

If the authentication is part of the first web-page you see, then it is not Basic Authentication.  I'll need to know some of the details of the HTML form.  In particular, I need to know the names of the input fields for the username and password.  I also need to know the form action URL and possibly, the names and values of any hidden input fields.  If this sounds complicated, save the HTML for this page to a file, ZIP it, and send it to me. 

3. I need to know the exact URL of the page which provides the line-status information.  This should be a page which shows the registration status of your VoIP line and it should also show a status code for Calls 1 & 2 for each line of your VoIP account.

4. I need to have a copy of the HTML from the above-mentioned page (line-status page).  Please note, I am not interested in your phone number(s), nor your username and passwords.  You can strip them out if you like, but please make sure you preserve the exact format of the HTML.  I prefer that you send the HTML ZIPped, to protect if from mangling by some of the mail systems between you and me.

 

Q. What is the difference between my "iChat status" and my "iChat status message"?
A. Your iChat status indicates your available/away/offline status.  Your iChat status message is somewhat independent of the status and is the textual message displayed for your buddies to see.