My talk at RubyConf India 2014 (http://rubyconfindia.org/2014/) on Adhearsion

1. Make ruby ‘talk’ to your users
- literally
Bhavin Javia!
Founder @
www.mavenhive.in

2. Voice enable your Ruby apps

3. Why voice ?
❖ Many more people have phones than PCs/
internet!
❖ Many people prefer voice communications
over other channels!
❖ Voice provides interesting use-cases that
text and images alone can’t!
❖ Integrating computers with phones sounds
like magic !

4. maintained by

5. What is Adhearsion ?
❖ Framework for voice apps!
❖ Business layer of telephony stack!
❖ Adhearsion = “adhesion” + “hear”!
❖ Glues voice layer to rest of the world

6. <3

7. What is Adhearsion ?
❖ Written in Ruby!
❖ Open Source!
❖ Easy to use DSL!
❖ Powerful eventing!
❖ Plugins for common problems!
❖ Helpful community!
❖ Democratising telephony

8. Who is it for ?
❖ Voice app developers!
❖ Voice service providers!
❖ Telephony network providers!
❖ Ruby developers!
❖ Web developers!
❖ Anyone who doesn’t know ABC of telecom
Not just for the telecom guys

9. Where is it used ?
❖ IVRs!
❖ Call Center/Sales Force Automation!
❖ Surveys!
❖ Directory/Translation services!
❖ Automated reminders!
❖ Tele-marketing!
❖ Shopify (http://vimeo.com/33038589)!
❖ Your app ?

10. Adhearsion Features
❖ IVR Menus!
❖ Call answering, transfer, conferencing!
❖ Voicemails!
❖ Click-to-call!
❖ TTS or Audio playback!
❖ ASR!
❖ Answering Machine Detection

11. How is it used ?
https://speakerdeck.com/benlangfeld/infiltrating-telecoms-using-ruby

12. Connecting Adhearsion
❖ Database - via Sequel!
❖ HTTP client - HTTParty, RestClient etc!
❖ Redis - via redis gem!
❖ DRb - via adhearsion-drb!
❖ AMQP and other queues!
❖ HTTP server - Reel, Sinatra!
❖ XMPP - adhearsion-xmpp
http://www.confreaks.com/videos/2266-adhearsionconf2012-connecting-adhearsion

13. Adhearsion.kind_of?(Rails)
but
Adhearsion != Rails

14. Got it !
show me something in action

15. Demo
Social feed ‘talker’
Dharampal HS!
@codemangler

16. Instructions
❖ Everyone, please Switch OFF your WiFi :)!
❖ 4-5 people, please raise your hands to volunteer

17. Volunteers Only
❖ Tweet something to @mavenhive!
❖ Listen to your tweets (on stage)

18. Features Demo’ed
❖ Call Routing!
❖ IVR (ASR)!
❖ TTS!
❖ Integration!
❖ to external APIs e.g. Twitter API!
❖ via Ruby libraries e.g. twitter gem

19. Real world example ?

22. Grasshopper Demo

23. Lets look under the hood

24. Celluloid
❖ OOP + Actor model!
❖ Concurrent objects!
❖ Adhearsion uses Celluloid!
❖ Sidekiq users Celluloid!
❖ It’s an ecosystem - Celluloid::IO, DCell, Reel
https://github.com/celluloid/celluloid

25. Punchblock
❖ Middleware library for telephony
applications!
❖ Similar to Rack for Rails/Sinatra!
❖ Consistent API over third-party call control
protocols - Rayo, Asterisk, FreeSWITCH!
❖ Frameworks/Apps can leverage
Punchblock’s APIs!
❖ Not a framework in itself!
❖ https://github.com/adhearsion/
punchblock

26. VOIP Platforms
http://mojolingo.com/blog/2013/adhearsion-voice-platform-comparison/
How to choose ?

27. FreeSWITCH with mod_rayo
❖ Calls bridging!
❖ Call rejection/redirection!
❖ Outbound dialing!
❖ Audio playback!
❖ Audio input!
❖ Audio recording
❖ Fax!
❖ Call Progress Analysis!
❖ Supervisory tone detection!
❖ Answering nachhing detection!
❖ Fax tone detection!

28. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)
❖ Communications protocol!
❖ Controls media communication sessions!
❖ e.g. Voice/Video calls over IP!
❖ Standardised as RFC 3261 under IETF!
❖ Application layer protocol!
❖ Independent of underlying transport - TCP/UDP/SCTP/
SMTP!
❖ Uses other protocols - SDP/RTP/SRTP!
❖ Similar to HTTP’s request/response model

29. DID (Direct Inward Dialing)
❖ DID numbers purchased from carrier
website!
❖ IP Address/FQDN of voice network
provided to carrier!
❖ Same or different carrier provides out
bound dialling!
❖ Calls are routed to single FS server or
OpenSIPS proxy

30. TTS (Text-To-Speech)
❖ Adhearsion itself does not provide a TTS engine!
❖ Works with various TTS engines via VOIP platforms like Asterisk,
FreeSWITCH etc!
❖ TTS Engines - Festival, Cepstral, Lumevox, Nuance, AT&T Speech API,
Google Translate!
❖ CallController#say

31. ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)
❖ Adhearsion supports third-party ASR engines!
❖ ASR Engines - PocketSphinx, Lumevox, Nuance, Vestec, AT&T Speech API!
❖ Plugin - https://github.com/adhearsion/adhearsion-asr!
❖ More insights - http://adhearsionconf.com/events/adhearsion-mania/

32. Simple Deployment

33. Scaling it up

34. How can I get started ?

35. https://github.com/mojolingo/Telephony-Dev-Box
https://mojolingo.com/blog/2013/using-telephony-dev-box/

36. Adhearsion Plugins
http://ahnhub.com/

37. Finding Help
❖ Documentation - adhearsion.com/docs!
❖ Mailing list - groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/adhearsion!
❖ Github Issue Tracker - github.com/adhearsion/adhearsion/issues!
❖ Reusable Plugins - ahnhub.com!
❖ IRC - adhearsion.com/irc!
❖ Talks - adhearsion.com/media!
❖ Conference - adhearsionconf.com

38. SippyCup
http://mojolingo.github.io/sippy_cup

39. Remember
❖ There is lots of fraud in telephony!
❖ Be very careful when exposing your server to the public internet!
❖ Use access control lists to reject all SIP / XMPP traffic from untrusted IPs!
❖ Do not use default usernames and passwords in example configuration!
❖ Encrypt traffic between FS and Adhearsion - if not in same LAN!
❖ Be careful about letting customers dial expensive countries!
❖ Block dialing to premium numbers or non-market parts of the world!
❖ RTP is not encrypted if using SIP!
❖ Use SRTP with SSIP for encrypted audio

40. References
❖ adhearsion.com!
❖ speakerdeck.com/benlangfeld!
❖ slideshare.net/bklang/presentations!
❖ vimeo.com/adhearsion!
❖ mojolingo.com/blog/2014/adhearsion-survey-results-v2!
❖ github.com/MavenHive/social-feed-talker (demo app)

41. Thank You
Bhavin Javia
@bhavinjavia
bhavin@mavenhive.in
www.mavenhive.in
speakerdeck.com/bhavinjavia
slideshare.com/bhavinjavia
presentation available shortly at -