Playing with a Caller ID Text Overlay Device

The Channel Plus 6110 displays Caller ID info on your TV when land line calls come in... but it has a few tricks up its sleeve which lets us send custom text from a computer over serial. Let's figure out how it works.
Video on RF channels for your homelab: • Homelab Episode 5: Cus...
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[@theserialport]

Great work bringing it to life. It reminds me of seeing the caller-id text on screen function that I saw working on a Directv receiver 20+ years ago

[@clabretro]

Ha interesting. We had a Directv receiver of the same era, and now that I do some research I think it was this one: blog.solidsignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/s-l1600.jpg Which makes my DSS joke even funnier.

[@insainllama]

My family had this feature enabled on our DIRECTV receivers up until 2018 when we ditched the landline. Was supported I believe up until this year when they released their new Gemini boxes.

[@Asniper]

@@clabretrooh man, see that photo brings back some memories.

[@kaitlyn__L]

That home cable thing is really nice. I also had a nice chuckle at "there's a problem if the pizza place is calling you"!

[@probnotstech]

It's great that they decided to include that serial port, so that it's not just locked down to Caller ID functions. Doing an old school "UP NEXT..." along the bottom during the credits would be pretty sweet as well. Also your HomeCable idea is so much more elegant and centralized vs my "we need ALL the USB flash drives!" approach.

[@clabretro]

Totally agree about that serial port, such a nice addition. It's what made me pick the thing up in the first place. Not sure what they had in mind with it, or if it was used in commercial applications or whatever, but definitely makes it more interesting now days.

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

"Feel like it's not good if a pizza place is calling _you_." Whatever the story behind that call, truer words were never spoken.

[@RichardVissers]

i used to live in Holt, MI. And see the 517 area code I ordered from that Fat Boys Pizza all the time. Good stuff.

[@clabretro]

haha that's awesome

[@eDoc2020]

Typing ASCII control characters is easy. If the control code for display reset is listed as "X" you press Control+X. Normally this would be written with a caret as "^X". This should work easily for most control codes. The big exception for you is when your terminal software "hogs" a control key, in your case minicom reserves ^A (in its manual they call it C-A). To send a ^A using minicom you need to type it twice. The other common exception is the XON/XOFF flow control characters ^Q and ^S but this probably isn't an issue in your situation.

[@clabretro]

oh interesting, I had no idea. I'll give that a shot.

[@moddaudio]

This thing probably uses the MAX7456 chip. It is commonly used in drones for overlays. There are a lot of DIY boards for that chip, which would connect to the pi via a SPI port. It is also possible to use an arm M1+ microcontroller instead of the MAX7456 chip to do the overlay.

[@clabretro]

Oh sweet

[@AureliusR]

Did you mean M0+? There is no ARM Cortex-M1, only M0, M3, M4, M7, and the "new" M23, M33, etc.

[@dominicus9891]

7:04 The musical notes could be because the chip inside might be shared with TV on screen displays. Like if you wanted to change the sound settings, it'd have a musical note as the icon. Also, the symbols next to the musical notes could be a "change input" symbol. I know a lot of sets which use a symbol like that to mean "input".

[@clabretro]

oh yeah good call

[@nynexman4464]

Music notes are also often used in closed captions to denote singing or music playing. So it might have origins in that too.

[@dominicus9891]

it would be@@fadate7292

[@clabretro]

that's a great idea, been needing an excuse to get a reader@@fadate7292

[@arjovenzia]

I LOVE the HomeCable concept. I have a small collection of portable TV's (4"-8") from the 80's I'd like to get set up as kinda 'art peices' around the house, you know, playing period correct TV shows on rotation. even go to the lengths of finding some of the actually good ads from the era, and the 'TONIGHT on channel 9 NEEEEWS' 30s clips. I can fix the TV's, n have messed about a bit with Pi's, but I in no way have the skills to set up more than a giant VLC playlist on random. this sounds like a heaps better option. very cool idea. I'd try it out for sure.

[@clabretro]

collection sounds awesome. I'll keep you posted as I make updates!

[@nated4wgy]

Love your channel dude. Recently got into Enterprise hardware, server routers and the like. Always been amazed by retro tech so your channel has become a staple. Easy patreon sub!

[@clabretro]

thank you!

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

Seeing those musical notes made me wonder if this thing could be used to build a Pi controlled Karaoke display. Would be a pretty cool project. The changes to text colour and background could be used to indicate where you are in a line by constantly refreshing the output. Fun to think about these things.

[@reidond]

just found about your channel(plus) from algorithm overlords and I like it!

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@mixdupjoe]

"How to watch DSS in the bedroom" --DSS was the name for what turned into DirecTV. In the late 90s when it first started, DSS was a satellite platform through which multiple companies sold video services. Eventually DirecTV bought the other company and it turned into a closed platform. ANYWAY, back when DSS first hit the scene you could only have one set top box in your house, or two if you got a more expensive system but most people didn't. It was super common to redistribute the RF output from the only satellite box in the house to all the other TVs. These guys probably sold some gear to make that setup "easier"

[@clabretro]

the funny thing is, I actually had one of those DSS satellite boxes as a kid, didn't realize it until you and some others commented about it!

[@SRQmoviemaker]

This is pretty neat, my parents still have cable and voip through the provider and their caller id shows up on the tv but looks a bit more modern. Actually got to hack the boxes to make their menus more readable [larger and better colors]

[@chuckybob1984]

Thank you for the peek behind the curtain so to speak!

[@TVJAY]

I would love to see the Go-Homelab-Cable project work and if you could have it output via HDMI (instead of analog) that would be even better. Looking forward to more of your videos!

[@AureliusR]

Well the Pi outputs via both HDMI and Composite so you can pick either one. If you want to output over HDMI you can just hook the Pi directly up to a TV.

[@G-Pie]

Forst time running up on home cable.. Maybe this would make my wife more interested in using our home media server!

[@PFearr]

This is actually really cool

[@WolfmanDude]

Wow I was just setting up something very similar at my home(the CATV setup). You can do soo many cool things with analog video!

[@Codeaholic1]

Ascii control characters all have their 7th bit set to 0. But you can type them by using the character with the same value in bits 0-6 but with the 7th bit set high. For example the CAN control character is b00011000 or 0x18. The corresponding character with the same value for bits 0 to 6 and bit 7 high is b01011000 0x58. Thats the upper case X character. If you press the "literal" key first which is usually control-v then press control-shift-x it will type a CAN control character. This depends on the mode of the ptty and wont work in all situations. The man ascii manpage is a great resource for this and is laid out in a table where these features grouped in blocks relationship makes sense. In vim/neovim :set list will show you control characters visually.

[@clabretro]

Ah, thank you for this! I'll give this a shot next time I'm messing around with it.

[@jonascale]

I am totally in love with this idea! great work thanks so much for sharing it with us.

[@clabretro]

Thanks!

[@kbhasi]

(15:39) Your idea of an older Raspberry Pi to play video as though it were an old pay TV channel reminded me of some side projects I wanted to do but couldn't do them or don't yet have the time to do so. In particular, with my Pi, I would've manually loaded video files into VLC when I wanted. Another idea I had was similar to what KZbin user '12voltvids' did where he had external TV tuners (in his case, ATSC tuners, but I would use DVB tuners instead) connected to RF modulators which then connected to the existing cable TV wiring in his home which had already been disconnected from the outside. I had planned to do so especially with the legacy SCV cable network having been discontinued in 2019 and some companies here selling MoCA adaptors to allow them to be reused, but I ended up moving to an older home which had already had its legacy cable wiring and connection points removed. I wasn't going to spend lots of money for a side project, so I cancelled it. (17:47) Following my childhood memories of a children's hospital in 2005 which had an in-house channel on their ward TVs (alongside the usual over-the-air Mediacorp TV channels) that was just an RF modulator connected to a 100 disc Philips VCD changer (VCD was still popular in Singapore at the time), I imagined adding additional indicators to the OSD to make it seem as though the videos were being played off of a VCD player/changer or VHS recorder/player. (Edit: the VCD changer mostly had Bob the Builder, Thomas, and Barney VCDs loaded into it, and I can't remember if it played any other VCDs. I then remembered that some of the TVs in the waiting areas were also tuned into that 'channel' too.)

[@clabretro]

Super interesting about that VCD changer. I have a LaserDisc player I've been thinking about getting hooked up to these things so I can watch the LaserDiscs throughout the house. 12voltvids setup was actually one of my inspirations for this project!

[@kbhasi]

@@clabretro I was not able to find any info online about the VCD changer, but I knew it was made by Philips because there was an OSD shown while changing discs, which when it had trouble trying to read one disc, showed 'PHILIPS' in the middle of the screen as a splash screen of sorts. The OSD was based on a character generator of some kind (which VHS recorders/players and VCD players used) and was displayed on top of a plain blue background. (Edit: the text was in white with a black outline) When it showed up in between discs, it showed a graphic on the left half of the screen (4:3 PAL) of a vertical stack of discs with indicators for (as far as I can remember) 1, 25, 50, 75, and 100, and one of the discs in the stack graphic would blink to indicate that it was picked as the next one to play. On the right half, the slot number of the disc was shown, as well as something to indicate that the disc was being brought over to the CD drive or that it was loading. Once the disc was loaded and began playing, the OSD showed a regular 'PLAY' indicator like what a consumer model Philips VCD player/changer would've probably shown (I'm not sure as we had a Pioneer VCD player at home instead, and later Toshiba and Sharp DVD players). The player was set to repeat all discs in order. Yep, the discs were stacked rather than being placed on a large carousel. I couldn't find any information online about it as it was never sold on the consumer market, only to businesses. I know the hospital, which was KK Children's Hospital (as it was in 2005), had Philips TVs and wireless headphones, so it made sense that they would've also purchased the VCD changers through the connections SingHealth (who owns KKH children's and women's) would've had with Philips Healthcare.

[@clabretro]

Very interesting!

[@lookitsahorner]

Awesome stuff! Regarding your lost work, if you have it in a GIT repository, check to see what you have in the repository! Your lost commit hashes might still be in your local repo, and if they are you can do a git checkout on them to recover your work!

[@clabretro]

Thanks! Yeah I took a look and unfortunately, no history. I was hoping I had stashed my changes or something but no luck. Really can't recall what I did to lose them, ha. Oh well -- the first time around is always the prototype anyway :D

[@masterme120]

​@@clabretro make sure to check the "git reflog" too - I've found plenty of lost commits that way

[@JesseTheStig]

Super cool video! As soon as I saw what you could do with it I went straight to ebay to find one with no luck. Hopefully my saved search lets me know if one pops up in the future! I have a whole channel plus rack I'm putting together with 6 planned out channels so far that was directly inspired by your rf modulator video!

[@clabretro]

Nice! I see a couple 6110s on eBay but they're $50 CIB, about twice what I paid. Definitely not as common as those RF modulators. What are you going to use to actually stream out the video?

[@JesseTheStig]

@@clabretro What did you search to find them cause I tried everything and couldn't find any! My saved search is set up as "channel plus model 6110". For my tv station rack I have a channel plus 5435, 5445 and a 5515 that should give me 8 channels all together that I'll link together and amplify using the DA-550HHR or DA-8200BID (I have both but haven't researched which will work better for my use). The 5515 can do IR repeating so I'm going to have rack mount sony dvd and blu-ray players for two of the channels that you'll be able to control with the original remotes from any room of the house with the channel plus model 2132 IR receivers which go into the model 2100A wall plates. The complete list of my channels (so far): 1. a futurama channel from a raspberry pi with the a/v rca cable exactly like your setup 2. the output from a cheap 4 camera dvr I got that I'll setup up with 4 retro Sanyo black and white IR cameras in my basement to watch the outside door, my server rack, utility room and maybe the cats hangout area 3. a local weather station that I'll set up some sort of dashboard up for and stream it using an old hp mediasmart streaming device 4. an old sony vaio home server or media pc that i'll use as a windows desktop incase i just want to stream a youtube or twitch stream 5. sony dvd player for movie playback 6. sony blueray player for movie playback

[@clabretro]

Ah you're totally right, those were a bunch of modulators on eBay. Cool idea about the IR repeater and the dvd/blueray players, I like that!

[@JacobStewardWhitaker]

Great video, your home cable network is a fun/cool concept. I've tried to do something related with RTSP. I'm looking forward to the follow up.

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@waterup380]

So you're the second channel I seen using this kind of stuff on here

[@Time4Technology]

Very cool device to tinker with!

[@Daniel15au]

Wow I love this. Nice work.

[@clabretro]

Thanks!

[@Koutsie]

awesome video and a good implementation for such old hw! can't wait to see you blow up 🎉

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@techguy765]

I have a feeling that this could be converted into some kind of a Teleprompter

[@fezbpu]

Fat Boys Pizza is still around in Holt Michigan, and it looks like they even have the same phone number!

[@douro20]

They're a national franchise business.

[@Lachlant1984]

I think I once saw a device like this in a Dick Smith catelogue. I wonder if there's a way to add a background to the text to make it a bit easier to see against the imagery behind the text.

[@GameInterest]

I came for the overlay, but stayed for the "straight up lies".

[@AureliusR]

Hehehe... sailing the high seas, are we, matey? CtrlHD, DVDRip... I hope you're at least on a private tracker!

[@clabretro]

arrrrrr

[@JamesBos]

Awesome! You should post the source for you app, that front end looks great! Is it using omxplayer to play the videos and your app is just controlling omxplayer so to speak? This is something that’s been on my ever growing todo list of projects.

[@clabretro]

github.com/clabland/go-homelab-cable It's a mess (and not really working... I hacked in a couple bug fixes for the video I need to push up). It's actually using VLC player (via the very nice libvlc-go package).

[@stitchfinger7678]

517 is the area code form the Greater Lansing Area in Michigan, and Fat Boys Pizza is still open!

[@FaultyStreams]

Caller ID supported a very small character set for stored names. Sometimes it's even padded with spaces to fill 15 characters I wrote a call display application for an IPTV provider over 10 years ago to do literally this, put the callers data on the TV

[@clabretro]

Ah nice! I couldn't remember if I ever saw special characters on caller ID back in the day but I figured that must be the case.

[@nil2k]

I know why you might prefer this but just in case you didnt know, vlc itself can overlay the filename on switching files

[@clabretro]

yeah that'd be the more reasonable way to go haha. this was just more fun. been meaning to look at the vlc overlay anyway though

[@nbarrager]

Something like this is my white whale: a device that overlays text over analog video. It seems like an old vcr or something could be modified

[@clabretro]

Yeah I wonder if there are mass market chips that do this sorta thing

[@CharlesShow]

It would be cool if you had this sync to your smart phone

[@GothGuy885]

Very cool! 😀 liked and Subbed! 👍

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@zacharyschwanke7160]

this is awsome! @clabretro can you setup a video on how to make your cable tv provider?

[@clabretro]

I have a video that goes over a lot of it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b5ytdGeQlq5gipI. But I definitely owe everyone some updates in the future.

[@paulstubbs7678]

Interesting, but as the Pi's are already generating the video, why not just get them to insert the text.

[@clabretro]

Yeah too easy though 😂

[@Bullwinkle39]

That's so cool

[@microcolonel]

Yes, Fat Boys Pizza is still around (in Holt, south of Lansing). Seems like everything is happening right here.

[@edgeeffect]

If you add your default user to the `dialout` group, then you don't have to `sudo` just to run minicom

[@clabretro]

Thank you! been meaning to look into that, I'll definitely do that.

[@dhannynara0248]

In my country, in the early days of the launch of 3G, there was once an ISP that provided 3G services so that if we dial a random 3-digit number, we could watch TV using a 3G video call. Can you demonstrate it like that at that time?

[@clabretro]

Interesting! Unfortunately I don't think I have the equipment to do that.

[@MateuszStarzak]

It's definitely not as fun as hacking retro hardware but you can generate overlays using dispmanx api natively inside the Raspberry Pi. It used to work with the old (original) drivers on the first RPis.

[@clabretro]

Hadn't heard of dispmanx before, interesting. And yeah software is definitely the more practical way to go, it's just fun to play with the hardware.

[@agoble123]

When I moved to Michigan my area code was 517 now its 989

[@LuminousWatcher]

I like the retro device archaeology, but couldn't this be done in sw on the pi too?

[@clabretro]

Oh yeah definitely, it was just fun to play with this device.

[@thesavo]

The next question is, can you mux this with Ota atsc channels with just an antenna on the input?

[@HFkepley9312]

There are many reasons that a pizza place might be calling rather its an issue with the order or they are calling to confirm something even if there is an issue with driver not being able to locate the home or to call and let you know delivery driver is on the way or not able to find the place to deliver to

[@TheKsax]

Thats a neat device, it does feel like it's inception is both genius and and feels like a hack. Overlaying on composite signal feels dirty to me for some reason. I my self have stumbled on HDMI Switcher, which have serial plug and documentation with commands even! Seems in similar vein to this device. Though serial protocol have no way to read active channel, so thats a bummer.

[@clabretro]

awesome! yeah that's weird you can't read the current channel, that would've been nice.

[@AureliusR]

Hey Clab, could you open up the 6110 and take a hi-res photo of the circuit board? I'm really curious as to what chips they are using. As someone else stated the MAX7456 is a likely candidate but it can't accept RS-232 directly so there must be a microcontroller of some sort. Really wondering what they used back then :)

[@clabretro]

will do! i'll follow up

[@wisteela]

Very interesting device. Does anybody know if they were sold out of the US?

[@clabretro]

I don't see anything in the manual it came with which implies any presence outside the US, but that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't!

[@jimmystikx]

I'd be interested in the code for cable channel stuff

[@clabretro]

I'll post an update when I get it cleaned up!

[@MontyHall.]

can you make a video on your ssh configs? I watched the proxmox homelab video recently and I would like to know how you set it up.

[@clabretro]

sure, what did you have in mind exactly? the SSH key setups?

[@microcolonel]

ascii 24 should be Ctrl + X in an ASCII terminal.

[@clabretro]

thanks! I'll try that

[@microcolonel]

@@clabretro And for future reference, you can look at the Control code chart section of the Wikipedia page on ASCII, under the column "Caret notation".

[@iivarimokelainen]

instead of figuring how to easily write lower ASCII chars to the tty, man sat there with a calculator for an hour. crazy

[@clabretro]

they were just two key strokes away

[@ap_fj]

Do you have a video on how you made that little Raspberry Pi television streaming contraption? I'd love to make one of those that just sits next to my tv and replays through a bunch of old/free tv.

[@clabretro]

Yup: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b5ytdGeQlq5gipI This is also a great video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaWzeY1rpaxppKM

[@JohnKiniston]

For your missing code could it be in your file history if you are developing on windows?

[@clabretro]

I was developing this remotely on a linux box, and for the life of me can't figure out what I did with those changes. Ah well, though, the second time around usually ends up better anyway haha.

[@benargee]

As cool as this is, I don't see why you can implement this on screen display with software. Even in the same font if you want the same feel. Thanks for digging up documentation on how to work this device for anyone who may need it in the future though.

[@clabretro]

Oh yeah software is the way to go, it was just fun seeing what this thing was all about.

[@benargee]

@@clabretro absolutely. That seems to be a theme on your channel, exploring old tech and demonstrating it's usage.

[@cmritchie04]

How are the robo/spoof callers changing their caller ID and phone number

[@gdplayer1035]

turn this into a terminal and try to use the commandline on it

[@GrantTwist]

I am a victim organized harassment and it involves mainstream companies. The reason is intimidation cover ing up for corruption. So one day they limit my internet hotspot connection is limited to cell phone only and when I got a new internet provider, land-based this time, the router and modem they dropped off for me only allows internet by cell phone only connection to the router it doesn't allow for a direct connection to my pc. I get that they're trying to play some stupid f****** game with me. Could somebody explain to me the technical aspects of what they're actually doing. I know from a different provider that they can limit your Wi-Fi on cell phone to cell phone only and not allow your computer on it. Do you get how much effort they're putting into this. Thanks for the help

[@_zproxy]

uhoh. vlc itself also can stream text tho eh

[@give_me_my_nick_back]

wow the entire idea is pretty dumb, for one you would need to be using some external device such as sat receiver or DVD to even see it since it would not interupt the regular tv and then you would be still forced to use crappy composite. This idea could have worked but only in Europe since SCART actually supported overlys so it would just beam an overlay over anything you were watching at any time...

[@clabretro]

Yeah I'm guessing the idea was to have this hooked up to a satellite receiver or something.