[ale] [OT] Home PBX?

[ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com (Jim Lynch)]

On 07/30/2012 12:48 PM, Michael Campbell wrote:
> So, we have an AT&T POTS line incoming, and I've been kicking the idea 
> around of doing a home PBX type thing.
>
> I was wondering where to start; are there some well-known FOSS things 
> out there that I could begin my research with?  I'm assuming I'd need 
> some sort of hardware (fax-modem?) to catch the incoming calls, then 
> the software to "do interesting $#@! with it".  I just don't know what 
> my possibilities are or what the capabilities (and price) of such 
> things would be.
>
> Pointers welcome.
Newer, cleaner and easier to understand is FreeSwitch.  I tossed 
Asterisk a while back.  Support is good.  There is an active IRC channel 
where a number of the developers hang out.  Also a very busy mailing list.

Warning, if you're not a telco person expect a fairly steep learning 
curve.  There's a lot of terminology involved that you may not be 
familiar with.  I liken the configuration  to SendMail.  Much of the 
configuration is a set of rules.  For instance when an event happens FS 
starts running tests on the event.  If the event is a ring from an 
external line, then it might test the caller id for a specific pattern, 
it might start a counter so it can answer on the Nth ring, it might 
"answer" and wait for a connection event and play a sound file, or 
bridge the call to an extension automatically, etc. Fortunately you can 
turn logging on to see what the tests are and if they pass or not for 
debugging.  It's kinda fun actually.

FreeSwitch is closer to pure open source.  It's community 
supported/developed whereas Asterick is open source but written by 
Digium a private company who sells PBX hardware and support.
http://www.freeswitch.org/

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/FreeSwitch

Here's an ISO with a GUI and FreeSwitch

http://www.2600hz.org/bluebox_download.html