CTI
- It Happened in P.E.C.
Mr. Ka. Selvaradjou,
Instructor, Pondicherry Engg. College.
Information
Technology is the most dominating field in today's world, which is stepping
into the
next Millennium. The tremendous growth in the Computer technology and telecommunication
has lead to the concept called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI).
The results of CTI turn the Computers into powerful communication
equipment, which help the people to interact with the machines for automatic
information retrival.
One such attempt has been successfully made in our Institution during the
last summer vacationby integrating PC and telephone. The objective was
to turn the PC into an Automatic Answering System for announcing the admission
results on demand. The idea has emerged from the writer of this article,
which he implemented as a mini project work being a part of his M.Tech
course during 1996. Though it was developed for the course work, later
it was 
decided
to be used for the actual purpose of communicating the entrance test results
to the candidates through telephony. This attempt would have not seen such
a great success without the sincere, dedicated and selfmotivated assistance
of Mr. SadaMahan Kubsad, a well known B.Tech ( CSE) student of PEC.
This is not the first time this service being launched in our institution,
but for the third time. Yes, the trial was made with 500 candidates who
have undertaken entrance examination for the admission into MCA and M.Tech
( ECE) courses during 1996. Though it was unofficial, the performance and
the utility were found to be excellent, surprising and satisfactory. The
trial was made with the consent of the then Principal, Dr. T.G. Palanivelu.
It was launched from the residence of Mr. Sada Mahan who voluntarily
gave his personal telephone for this purpose. The system was put into operation
round the clock, all the 24 hours continuously. The candidates in and around
Pondicherry could get their entrance test results right from their house
using telephone. Nearly about 60% of the candidates could avail this facility
in a useful manner. Just one telephone line was not sufficient to cater
to the needs of 500 candidates. The system took about 50 seconds to answer
a call and no waiting time in between subsequent calls. The feedback from
the users revealed that they had to wait for about 20 to 30 minutes to
get the call matured, otherwise they found the system a useful one to know
their score in the entrance test.
The excellent performance of the system tempted
the administration to utilize this facility for the
Entrance Examination conducted during 1997 for the admission into the first
year B.Tech courses. This time it was made official and two casual connections
were availed from the Department of Telecom and launched from the
residence of the writer of this article. It served the purpose of disseminating
the entrance test scores to the candidates through telephone. As much as
3000 candidates have availed this facility and the performance had been
improved compared to the earlier trial. There were few complaints about
the pronunciation of the marks, which would have confused the public such
as 'sixty' for 'fifty'. Immediately the mistakes were corrected upon receipt
of the complaints.
The Govt. of Pondicherry has decided to conduct a Joint
Entrance Test ( JET) for the candid
-ates seeking for admission into Engineering and Biology based courses
in various institutions of Pondicherry Union Territory, from this academic
year. Having been assumed the charge of Convener for the Centralized
Admission Committee (CENTAC), our respectable Principal, Dr. K.
Ethirajulu wished to extend this facility for the convenience of entrance
test candidates this year also.
Three temporary telephone lines have been availed from
the Department of Telecom and
the service was launched from the residence of the writer of this article.
This catered to the need of 4000 candidates who have appeared for the JET'98.
This time the service was given to disseminate the entrance test score
in Math's, Physics & Chemistry and Biology papers as a first phase.
Later the system was used to convey the relative merit positions of the
candidates among the eligible candidates for both the engineering and non
engineering groups. The cut-off mark details and the counseling date information
were also made available in this service as and when given by the CENTAC.
The response from the public was excellent. Much
care has been taken by the team to convey
the information with an intention to avoid complaints from the public.
This has made the system to take about 2 minutes to complete a call and
proceed to the next one. The CENTAC is very much thankful to Mr.
Leo Marshal Antony, Telecom District Manager, DoT, Pondicherry, and
his team for their continuous support in making the system a useful one
for the public. Special thanks are due for their willingness to give hunting
facility as well as for their co-operation in minimizing the down-time
of the telephone lines, in spite of their busy schedule in the installation
work of a new exchange at Muthialpet.
The system uses a PC with Sound Blaster Card, a MODEM
and speech coupling circuit. The
incoming call is recognized by the MODEM and system attends the call after
two rings are detected by activating a relay. The sound card is programmed
to play a pre-recorded voice file, which welcomes the user and gives some
guidelines to use the system. The user is informed to enter his/her registration
number from their telephone handset. This five digit registration number
(in DTMF) is recognized by the Modem and read by the software. The system
was also made to spell out the registration number digit by digit for confirming
that the number has been recognized properly. The software is made to search
in the database containing the entrance test score details as given by
the CENTAC and the information such as mark and merit position were
made spoken by the system both in words and by digits for better understanding
at the calling end.
Though the sound blaster cards are having the speech synthesizer
capabilities, which translates
the text into speech, such a feature is not used for our system. This is
simply because of the fact that many people could not understand the accent
that of American style. Hence, it was decided to record the number such
as one, two etc. and few voice files such as 'Your score out of 200 is..'
etc. and by a software these files were patched according to the scores
of the candidates and made spoken (replayed) by the sound blaster card.
If at all the users did understand the digit pronunciations properly, the
credit goes to our CSE student Ms. Shanthi, (1993-97 batch).
The entrance test candidates were informed of the availability
of this service from 6 PM on 28th
June onwards. As the results were not ready by CENTAC by that time,
simply a message saying 'Results are awaited shortly in this service..'
was recorded in all the 3 systems. Between 6 to 11 PM, each and every system
had attended at most 800 calls continuously. The finalized mark list given
by CENTAC was then installed in all the systems at midnight (12
O'clock). The systems were continuously accessed by many people to know
their entrance test scores.
Though this small idea has fetched two prizes at
National level competition for 'innovative
hardware design contest' at Delhi College of Engineering, New Delhi
and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur , during the year 1997,
it gave great pleasure to our team only when this was utilized by our own
institution. Of course, the real pleasure of any Engineer could be that,
his own product from his test bench reaches the hands of the end users.
Yes, we are happy and delighted to know that our systems were accessed
and utilized by thousands of people. It may be difficult to believe, but
it is true that as much 10,000 calls have been attended by all of our 3
systems in our recent attempt. If the college administration encourages,
the facility may be implemented in the following years with additional
telephone lines.
This success would not have been achieved without the
direct or indirect help from many key
persons. The writer of this article sincerely thanks the timely help given
by Mr.V.Prithviraj,Asst.Professor, Mr.G.Sivaradje, Lecturer of Dept.
of ECE, all the staff members of Sreenivasa Ramanujam Computer Center,
and all the staff members of CSE department. Special thanks are
also due to Dr.C.Chudalai Muthu Pillai, Dr.V.Soundarajan and
Mr.R.S.Bhuvaneswaran for their valuable suggestions and co-operation
at all stages.
The writer of this article welcomes the constructive criticism
from all the users ( who happened
to read this )of this facility which would improve the system in future,
by eliminating the bugs in the present system.
E-mail address: selva@pondiec.ren.nic.in(or)
selvaraju@hotmail.com
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