Call recording? - Printable Version

Call recording? - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Call recording? (/showthread.php?tid=17048)

Call recording? - Greendrake - 07-23-2022

First of all, let us please not be sidetracked by the question of legality of call recording. There are places in the world where recording calls is perfectly legal without telling anyone (as long as you are a party to the call), so let's just assume the feature is to be used by people from/in those places only. I am one of them.

So, is there any software that can be run on PPP to record phone calls at all?

RE: Call recording? - wibble - 07-25-2022

I don't think there's anything that does it as standard. This is at least in part because we don't have a standard set of audio profiles to cover the different tasks so that the necessary mixer and control settings can be abstracted, so an app would end up hardware-specific. I haven't checked whether it's the same on the Pro, but on the base PinePhone the standard audio routing for calls doesn't go through the record/replay interfaces, so the app would have to change this before initiating recording. It would also need to know about routings for headset or bluetooth.

RE: Call recording? - Greendrake - 07-25-2022

(07-25-2022, 02:58 AM)wibble Wrote: I haven't checked whether it's the same on the Pro, but on the base PinePhone the standard audio routing for calls doesn't go through the record/replay interfaces, so the app would have to change this before initiating recording. It would also need to know about routings for headset or bluetooth.

Interesting! Can you please post some links where that can be checked for Pro? Guess this info is publicly available?

I pretty much suspected that I may have to end up writing some custom apps to accomplish the task. Lack of call recording is currently the only thing that stops me from switching to Pro as the primary phone for calls (now still using an old Android in which the ability to record calls wasn't yet removed).

RE: Call recording? - wibble - 07-25-2022

For the original Megous documented the routing, and the diagrams act as a good guide if you go looking into the available controls in alsamixer.
https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html

I haven't seen an equivalent for the Pro, though I haven't been looking so it may be out there somewhere. Perhaps something in Megous' development log I missed?
https://xnux.eu/log/
If it isn't you'll probably have to go into the details of the schematic and the datasheets to work out exactly what's connected to what, and compare with the mixer settings to see how the audio is being routed. It's probably using low level digital connections between processor, modem and bluetooth too, where both ends need to have the same configuration for it to work.

This hardware specificity is why at a high level Android has a number of specified standard audio profiles that the application can use. It's then up to the manufacturer to provide the correct hardware-specific settings for these profiles as part of the hardware abstraction layer. We have the beginnings of that with the alsa ucm profiles, but there are situations we don't yet have profiles for. We may not even have standard names for them. File under 'things we still need for a viable smartphone platform.'

RE: Call recording? - baptx - 09-05-2025

It is possible to record calls through the microphone with an app like gnome-sound-recorder on the PinePhone (so maybe it works for the PinePhone Pro too) but there is a large volume difference between the caller and callee and I did not find a way to record calls when using headphones. I also mentioned "AT+QAUDRD Record Media File" modem commands that did not work for me:
https://github.com/Peetz0r/call-recorder/issues/2
I am still using the Jolla smartphone from 2013 as my primary smartphone because of this issue and other ones.

RE: Call recording? - biketool - 09-06-2025

I was playing with this about a year ago.
themodemdistro website I think has the info needed. https://themodemdistro.com/ (mentioned but I don't see the link)
I think there are nearly 130(yea, one hundred and thirty!) different audio devices in the modem, so figuring it out alone will be difficult I think but should be easy once you figure it out to point the audio recording app or a CLI audio recorder to that particular interface.
You can also 'chat' with the modem via sms and I think you can activate a call recorder in the modem's OS.

RE: Call recording? - baptx - 09-06-2025

(09-06-2025, 11:50 AM)biketool Wrote: I was playing with this about a year ago.
themodemdistro website I think has the info needed. https://themodemdistro.com/ (mentioned but I don't see the link)
I think there are nearly 130(yea, one hundred and thirty!) different audio devices in the modem, so figuring it out alone will be difficult I think but should be easy once you figure it out to point the audio recording app or a CLI audio recorder to that particular interface.
You can also 'chat' with the modem via sms and I think you can activate a call recorder in the modem's OS.

Indeed, I remember having heard about call recording for the PinePhone here:
https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/releases/tag/0.7.1
The project themodemdistro was mentioned here:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support#Sweden
I will have to try it.

RE: Call recording? - biketool - 09-09-2025

(09-06-2025, 04:59 PM)baptx Wrote: Indeed, I remember having heard about call recording for the PinePhone here:
https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/releases/tag/0.7.1
The project themodemdistro was mentioned here:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support#Sweden
I will have to try it.

Using the SMS interface to number

Code:
+223344556677

https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/blob/kirkstone/docs/SMS_INTERFACE.md#call-recording-you-need-adb-enabled-to-retrieve-them

Call recording (you need ADB enabled to retrieve them)
[/url]
WARNING: Call recording may be forbidden in some jurisdictions. Make sure it is legal to record calls in your country before using these functions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws)

Code:
record and recycle calls
: Records every call and deletes it after you hang up, unless you send

Code:
record this call
while in the middle of it to tell it to keep it in the default storage (*1)
Code:
record all calls
: Records all calls and keeps it in the default storage (*1)
Code:
stop recording calls
: Disables call recording
Code:
record this call
: Records the current established call, if

Code:
record and recycle calls
is active, the call will be stored from the beginning, otherwise it will record from the moment it acknowledged the command
Code:
record next call
: The modem will record the next outgoing or incoming call
Code:
cancel record next call
: Cancels the previous command

Call recording storage
[url=https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/blob/kirkstone/docs/SMS_INTERFACE.md#call-recording-storage]
Calls will be stored in

Code:
/tmp

if persistent logging is disabled, or to

Code:
/persist

if it is enabled. There's a limited space available in the modem, so if openqti is running out of space it will first try to remove old logs from the storage, then it will delete every other recording except the current one, and if storage is really too low, it will stop the recording entirely. To avoid data loss, especially if you are recording every single call, you should set up a script that periodically retrieves the calls and frees up the space for new ones. I've put a proof of concept script in

Code:
tools/helpers/retrieve_recordings

in this repo, but contributions are always welcome