Premise MSN Messenger Bridge

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Dan Quigley wrote an application that connects MSN Messenger to Premise (MSN Messenger Bridge). Basically, it is clever chatbot for Premise. It lets you request the status of all sorts of devices, as well as control them, all via MSN Messenger using simple phrases.

I tried using it but I didn't get very far. I supplied the ChatClient with my Premise server's name/username/password and the login details for a Windows Live account. It doesn't establish a connection and simply waits forever.

Thinking that it might be due to the ChatClient was written many years ago (2003), I downgraded from the latest Messenger client (8.5) to 5.0. Aside from being a much smaller program, the older version didn't resolve the problem.

All of the C# source code is included in the distribution so with some code-tweaking, and with an understanding of the Messenger API, I may be able to find what's ailing this little gem. Or maybe an experienced Premise user knows what it needs and can save me many hours of searching! Anyone?

PS
From everything I've read, I believe Dan Quigley is Premise's founder. Maybe he's lurking on this forum ...

ADDENDUM
By supplying a bogus IP address for the Premise server, I can cause the ChatClient to respond with an error message "Login to SYS Server 10.1.1.1 failed". It suggests that, when given a proper IP address, it can establish a connection with my Premise server but waits forever for a connection to Windows Live.

 

[123]

I loaded the ChatClient's source code into Visual Studio, peppered it with "Debug.Writeline" statements, ran the new build and watched the fun with DebugView. It has no problem connecting to Premise but stumbles with MSN (i.e. Windows Live).

I also read about the MSN communications protocol; it appears that the ChatClient doesn't follow the currently accepted authentication procedure. It starts with the "VER" command but doesn't move on to "CVR" ... in fact there's no code anywhere to handle "CVR" ... there's code for "ANS" which I can't find in the documentation.

My C# skills aren't anywhere in Dan's territory ... not sure I'll be able to modify the code to fix the problem.

 

[123]

I loaded the ChatClient's source code into Visual Studio, peppered it with "Debug.Writeline" statements, ran the new build and watched the fun with DebugView. It has no problem connecting to Premise but stumbles with MSN (i.e. Windows Live).

I also read about the MSN communications protocol; it appears that the ChatClient doesn't follow the currently accepted authentication procedure. It starts with the "VER" command but doesn't move on to "CVR" ... in fact there's no code anywhere to handle "CVR" ... there's code for "ANS" which I can't find in the documentation.

My C# skills aren't anywhere in Dan's territory ... not sure I'll be able to modify the code to fix the problem.

 

[chucklyons]

I loaded the ChatClient's source code into Visual Studio, peppered it with "Debug.Writeline" statements, ran the new build and watched the fun with DebugView. It has no problem connecting to Premise but stumbles with MSN (i.e. Windows Live).

I also read about the MSN communications protocol; it appears that the ChatClient doesn't follow the currently accepted authentication procedure. It starts with the "VER" command but doesn't move on to "CVR" ... in fact there's no code anywhere to handle "CVR" ... there's code for "ANS" which I can't find in the documentation.

My C# skills aren't anywhere in Dan's territory ... not sure I'll be able to modify the code to fix the problem.

I've been lookng at some commercial chats stuff (jabber, etc) for my other life...MSN Live has a chat widget that can be embedded into a page that allows you to communicate w/ other MSNers; Jabber gives you the ability to do the same; I havent looked at whether it could be embedded into, or communicate with the MSN bridge, but conceptually, given the extensibility of jabber server/client, I may have to look at it further...