DTMF dialer
UPDATE : see dtmf-dialer-got-new-features
I got around to hacking some code together for a simple DTMF dialer on the mobile.
Its functional and simple. Enter a number, click ok and it will play the correct sequence of tones. It’s even possible to tweak the duration and pauses.
I have only tested it on my own Nokia 6300, but as far as I can tell it should run on most java enabled mobile phones.
Here are the jad and jar files. If you want to run the program download them to your mobile and have fun.
At the moment it converts + to 00 and removes +45, as this is appropriate for a danish setting.
Here is the sourcecode if you need to make changes.
Using Netbeans
I used netbeans 6.0.1 and it was a mixed pleasure. Creating the the flow using a drag’n’drop interface, is well nice for something small and simple as this, but I found that it soon got frustrating. There’s no API to look in, and you have to use the mouse all the time.
This is the basic flow of the midlet. It was very quick to set this up, and it were indeed a pleasure to start with. Somewhere along the way a made a mistake, which the flowdesigner and codegenerator couldn’t handle. And no matter what I tried I couldn’t get rid of it, I knew exactly what i was. I had misnamed a variable and managed to let the generated code go into a never-ending recursion. (something along the lines of: private TextField foo() { return new TextField(Foo);} ). But no matter what I tried it just wouldn’t get back to normal. In the end I just created a new project, remade the flow stuff to what you see above, and copied a few functions over.
And the flowdesigner is quick to work with, but I get a nagging suspicion that if you are going to make something a little more complicated than this it will be an annoyance. You might know exactly where and what to change in the source code, but do you remember where to point, click and edit in the designerinterface? Another critique is that even when you know what to do, your workflow gets abruptted by having to constantly shift hands between keyboard and mouse.
To Netbeans defence i must say that I am used to using Eclipse, and changing to another IDE is in it self a frustrating experience. Whats the shortcut for blah, where do I set this. And its quite possible that I just didn’t know enough about Netbeans structure and shortcuts to feel at home.
Credit goes out to : openclipart.org for the image of the phone and dialabc for the soundfiles.