RAStimer v2 Log the uptime and cost of connecting to your ISP This NT application monitors your RAS dialout connections, showing on screen the ongoing cost of any calls made. The system tray icon is animated when a call is in progress, its caption is the total cost of the call so far. Different rates can be used for different RAS dialout entries, multiple simultaneous calls are logged, and can be viewed whilst in progress. A summary history of calls can be kept and a graph shown displaying previous months usage, calls, duration and costs. Each quantity is seperately selectable for display. Click on a month in the graph and the usage for each day of that month is shown below, drag the splitter up and down to resize both graphs. Then click on a day in the month display and get a breakdown of all individual calls for that day Please report bugs to rastimer@jpsc.co.uk Send your email address to rastimer.reg@jpsc.co.uk and I'll send you a message whenever a new version of RAStimer is available. RAStimer is available on my web page http://www.cix.co.uk/~jpsc or I can send it direct to you if you do not have web access. How to use RAStimer: The install program will have given you the option of running the program. If you didn't, or would like to run it again, you will find it on your Start menu, under Programs. When you are happy with the way it runs, you can move it to your startup folder and have it run automatically whenever you log in. When RAStimer is running it is invisible except for a telephone icon in the system tray, to change parameters click on this icon. You should see a page of tabs, one for each RAS phonebook entry. Click on your favourite entry and press the Charging button. Then click on the checkbox to say this is your preferred connection, and set the charging rates. All costs are in your currency per minute, and your currency for minimum charge and granularity. For example, my entries for Telewest and CIXIP (prices ex VAT) are as follows: Telephone ISP charges charges Peak 0.03021 0.01 £/min Start 08:00:00 Cheap 0.0126 0.01 £/min Start 18:00:00 Weekend 0.00723 0.01 £/min Minimum 0.035 0.01 £ Granularity 0.001 0.01 £ When the fields are complete press the OK button and the values will be saved in the registry (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JPSC\RAStimer). Peak rate is after Peak Start and before Cheap Start (cheap before and after obviously) Weekend rate is all Saturday and Sunday Minimum is the minimum call cost, for telephone and ISP respectively. Granularity is the charging unit, for the example above Telewest charge by the tenth of a penny, CIX charge by the whole minute. Now fill in the charging rates for any other phone book entries you regularly use. Select Edit Options... from the menu and and select a file (if it exists it will be appended to, or created if necessary). Enter an (existing) directory in the history field - the trailing \ is optional. Click on File Logging, and File History - when ticked they are enabled. When logging a line in the following format will be written every time a connection is broken: CIXIP 16/02/1998 07:05:56 to 16/02/1998 07:05:56 231s £0.038 Tel + £0.048 ISP = £0.088 CIXIP 16/02/1998 10:05:44 to 16/02/1998 10:05:44 42s £0.007 Tel + £0.020 ISP = £0.044 CIXIP 16/02/1998 11:05:49 to 16/02/1998 11:05:49 43s £0.006 Tel + £0.019 ISP = £0.044 CIXIP 16/02/1998 12:04:58 to 16/02/1998 12:04:58 163s £0.026 Tel + £0.080 ISP = £0.111 Telco and ISP costs are shown unrounded, total cost takes into account the minimum cost and granularity. Times are reported to the nearest second. Costs are reported in pounds to the nearest 0.1p (or your currency to nearest 1000th). The history option sums connections, duration, Telco, ISP and total cost for each month. Use File Import to read in your old logs (don't do it twice for any call or the summary will be wrong). A later version will allow the history to be selectively purged, at the moment the only thing you can do is delete the database (8 files MONTHSUM.DB MONTHSUM.PX PBKENTRY.DB PBKENTRY.PX CALLDTL.DB CALLDTL.PX PARADOX.LCK and PDOXUSRS.LCK) and re-import. Make sure you close RAStimer before you do this. Display a bar graph of past usage with Graphs Past Months, turn each set of bars on and off using the buttons along the top. If a call is made while the RAStimer main form is displayed, then it will flip to the tab for that phone book entry, and display the details of the call, updated every second. The system tray icon is animated whenever a call is being made to the preferred phone book entry. Each phone book entry tab shows details of the last call made. Save your logs - you may need to import them if the database changes. RAStimer v2 can import v1 logs. Known problems Timing starts as soon as the modems negociate a carrier, this is wrong on two counts, the telcosts are short by the time it takes the modems to lock on, and the IP costs are long by the time the PPP/SLIP link takes to set up. RAStimer doesn't know anything about public holidays, your telco or ISP may switch to cheap rates then, and RAStimer has no way to log it. Doesn't log calls when you're logged out (v1 did, but I didn't find many people who ran services using RAS) When started on a system with no RAS phonebook entries gives "List index out of bounds" There's no help Future possibilities (vote for ones you want to see) Separate charge bands for telco and ISP. Allow arbitrary charge bands (eg Luxembourg has 3 charging rates during week days and 2 at the weekend) Allow flat monthly rate and minimum monthly rate for ISPs to be specified. Split into two programs, one running as a service doing the logging, the other looking like this one. Show CIX conferencing costs. Allow zooming in on the graphical display of call history to see individual call records (text). Format dates according to control panel settings Provide alarm facility for over long calls. Log incoming calls. Anything else you'd like to see? John Cooper JPSC Ltd. Rochester Lodge Bridge Road Wallington Surrey SM6 8SQ UK +44 7050 611127 http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=SM68SQ Modification History: V2.10 (25 Mar 98) Removed debugging code from windows shutdown detection Added progress meter for log import Added calls Today and calls Yesterday graphs Fill all tabs with last call details on startup Sort the phone book entry tabs across the page Update icon hint on change of preferred connection Show call cost of preferred connection on systray icon hint Built for release V2.02 (4 Mar 98) Added month graph, summary for each day Fixed problem with RAStimer interrupting Windows shutdown Made import more friendly so you can do other things while it trundles (5500 calls in 60 mins) Creates graph screens on the fly to reduce memory footprint V2.01 (27 Feb 98) Changed buttons to menu items and made screen resize sensibly. Fixed bug where connect end time was logged identical to start. Changed to use Windows locale currency string instead of £ hard coded. Added import function to read back in old logs. Fixed error 105 when log file didn't exist Corrected Tel & IP charges shown the wrong way round Fixed tab order in charging form Moved log file name etc to Edit Options screen Added history and graph screen V2.00 (16 Feb 98) New GUI version Multiple connections Different rates for different calls Separate min charge and granularity for ISP and telco Optional logging Animated icon V1.04 (5 June 96) Fixed charging problem with call split over charge bands Added currency symbol V1.03 (13 May 96) Print current time when debug mode starts V1.02 (8 May 96) Added 10th optional parameter, logfile - can now be run as a service Fixed bug - connection details not being reported in snapshot run Added debug mode - waits for connection then logs every transition (^C to exit) Removed trailing blanks from log V1.01 (7 May 96) Fixed bug - cheap and peak rates reversed v1.00 (6 May 96) first release