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You can run the server software ( Free ) on any older machine and the phones are nearly open source with the options they have.

The Phone can be expensive but any unit ( phone, cell, PC etc) that can run SIP based telephone calls will interface fine.

For example I have a HTC Dream with android and the SIPDroid app works very well.

Links:
http://www.trixbox.org/

http://www.polycom.com/

http://www.sipdroid.com/

I have at least one friend who set up Asterisk for their home system, and got SIP phones where hardware phones are needed, and put software phones and headsets on all the computers.

http://www.asterisk.org/
http://www.trixbox.org/

I've not played with the free (as in beer) solutions, but the semi-free business versions (Trixbox, Digium) do support a shared speed-dial list. Plus you gain intercom, paging, music on hold, etc.

Check out the Asterisk software, and specifically the "chan_mobile" extension. It allows you to use a cellphone (with bluetooth) as an "incoming" channel for a phone system, or to use the cellphone as an extension on the phone system. I believe that chan_mobile is included by default in the newest (1.6.x) version of the asterisk software.

Asterisk has a fairly steep learning curve, so it will likely be a time consuming adventure to get it all working, but assuming the bluetooth on your phone supports it, it should allow you to do what you want. You will need to have a Linux computer that has bluetooth, runs the asterisk software, and you will also need an "FXS" port (can be a $15 internal card, or a $30 IP based one) that connects your home phones to the computer.

The voip-info.org site and the asterisk-users mailing list are both invaluable if you are just starting out with asterisk.

If diving into setting up your own asterisk server from scratch is too daunting, it may be easiest to try a prebuilt setup (such as Trixbox CE) and then following one of the guides for adding chan_mobile support to it. I can't personally say how involved this would be, since I've never used any of the pre-setup Asterisk systems.

Good luck!

If my US ISP knew I had some second hand IP-phones, a second hand computer for a TrixBox FOSS PBX, and a pay-as-you-go IAX/SIP trunk ($5 a month for local phone number, plus 2Â/min), you can bet they would TRY to shut me off since they also offer (crappy) VoIP service. But all I should have to do is say, "fine, I will take my business elsewhere" and they will roll over like a puppy if they care about surviving, anti-competitive-behavior arguments aside.

This is NOT new. Anyone using Asterix has likey programmed their system to do just that. You can have it do whatever you like.

ONe trhing is that telemarketers and certainly scammers will block their caller ID. So you don't gt any number. These calls would go to an automated system that asked them questions and has them press numbers. The questions never (literally near) end... If you are a telemarketer press 3, if you are selling household goods press1, services ppress 3,,,,,, please enter you suoe size and then the pounf key,,, Please enter your social security number and the press pond,.... and then it starts over.

Most of then get the idea after the first question and hang up.

A free home oriented system is here
http://www.trixbox.org/

The full up free asterix system is here
http://www.asterisk.org/

There are a couple of roll-ups that include Asterisk, a GUI, and other apps along with a Linux distro on a single CD. I personally have used trixbox for a home server with a telasip VOIP line. If you just want to do an easy home install on an old machine or VM you could start with one of these.

Trixbox is one of the most popular, I found it very easy to install and use. However they were featured in yesterdays article about a phone-home "feature" that allowed Fonality to run code on an installed machine.
AsteriskNOW is made by Digium, the maintainers of Asterisk. Its still in beta, but there are prebuilt VMware and Xen virtual machines ready for download if you just want to give it a try.
Elastix seems to be getting some good reviews, but the main site has been down for the past few days. The link to the left is the sourceforge pages.

Kerry has already addressed this in his blog:

http://www.trixbox.org/trixboxs-new-hardware-audting-tool

I've done a lot of work with VOIP both for myself and for a few clients. In a business situation look at setting up an Asterisk server (very easy with TrixBox). For home use there are lots of similar providers. You can look up some information at http://www.voip-info.org/ and the forums at http://www.trixbox.org./ I've had good experience with Vitelity and VoicePulse. I use their services to connect to my Asterisk box, so that doesn't directly transfer over. Based on what I've seen a few of my friends go through I can recommend that you NOT go with SunRocket.

Asterisk can do this rather trivially as part of the dial plans. Get yourself a TDM22B or some other similar card and you can set up anything you want to happen when a number calls in. From forwarding to another number to answering and then hanging up, to answering and asking for a passcode in order to make your phones ring, you can do it with an Asterisk set up.

Maybe try Trixbox for an easy to use, all in one setup of the same. Pop in the Trixbox CD and it auto-installs.

I have a configuration that allows incoming calls during certain times of day and then only from other numbers after those times. So it definitely sounds like what you want to do will be possible with *.

Get everyone to get a phone like this:
http://www.voipsupply.com/product_info.php?product s_id=802

Install Trixbox on a healthy server for your voip gateway:
http://www.trixbox.org/

If you put the server on the local campus network and the campus is covered with Wi-Fi, bam you are done. If you can put the server on a public static IP then everyone with one of these phones can make a call to someone else with one of these phones where ever VOIP can travel over the internet. If you really wanted to, you could add a few lines via VOIP suppliers to offer outbound calling. You could charge a small monthly and get unlimited minute VOIP lines for outbound calls. Inbound calls could be routed via DID but that is a lot bigger than you wanted.

I'm the lead deveoper for freePBX, which is the GUI for Asterisk that Trixbox uses, and I was a bit surprised by this announcement. The CEO of Fonality has clarified things a bit in a comment to my original post when I first heard about this. The linked blog entry is pretty much incorrect, from what I can see. I've also posted on the trixbox forums and Chris also explained a bit more there about what's going on.

However, FreePBX _is still free_ - It hasn't been bought, it's still pure Open Source, and it's not forking to a non-free addition, so don't panic. Trixbox is just a wrapper for asterisk and freepbx (and, obviously, a couple of other things), and Fonality have bought the wrapper, not the package.

I'll leave to to your previously scheduled conspiracy theories now.

--Rob

Just so you know, I started with Skype, and it works just dandy. If it drains away my resources, I haven't noticed it. But, I've recently had the pleasure of installing asterisk at home, and it is the way to go! If you install and use Asterisk, you have the widest choice of phones (including soft phones) and VoIP endpoint providers, and you have the flexibility of changing your mind about any one of those choices at any time without disturbing the rest of the system. In my recent conversion, I converted the whole house to use Asterisk without changing any of our phones. My wife doesn't notice the difference - she just calls normally and it works. But, behind the scenes, I can selectively route different calls to different networks - hard wired or VoIP - to take advantage of whatever route I decide is the best. If any one of those routes starts to irritate me, I can change it without affecting the rest of the system. Try that with Skype.

Now, a common argument you might get against this approach is that it's unneccesarily complicated and requires a dedicated machine. Well, it may be partially true, in that it's more complicated than installing a single SIP or Skype phone or softphone, and the best (IMHO) approach for an install takes a surplus box; however, the TrixBox distribution gets you up and running awfully fast, and can be installed onto a crap machine (I'm using a celeron 500). Follow the How-To here. The flexibility is worth it. And, if you have a decent net connection and VoIP provider, the call quality even for VoIP is outstanding.

Other advantages are flexibility in call routing. I currently have a digium TDM400P card hooked up in my install, with one module hooked up to the phone line, and the other module hooked up to all my analog phones in the house. (I'll eventually replace some of the analog phones with some nice IP phones when I have the cash.) I could just as easily add SIP softphones connected to Asterisk, if I wanted, but normal phones seem more natural to me, and it's cheap to do with the TDM400P card. I have three inbound and outbound trunks set up, one using the land line, one using VoipJet for long distance over VoIP, and one for calls in from and out to the Free World Dialup SIP network. I have my dial plan set up as follows:

Any calls coming in from either my old PSTN landline or my Free World Dialup account are routed to my dialplan, which during the day (6AM to 11PM) rings the analog phones. If the caller is blocking caller id, it forces them to enter their phone number first before ringing the phones. At night, (currently defined as 11PM to 6AM) callers are sent to a VRU, which asks them to hang up if they're a phone solicitation, press 1 to actually call us, or 2 to send the call straight to voicemail without waking us up. In either case when it rings the phones, it will go to voicemail if we don't answer. That voicemail can be retrieved either by the phone, by secure web interface, or currently I also have it email me the wav file of the message.

For outgoing calls, I have it set like this: If you dial a seven digit number, a toll free number, 911, or use a 9 prefix before a long distance call (in case my network connection is down), it dials out through the land line. If you dial a long distance number normally (using just 1 + area code + number, or 011 + country code + international number), it routes it through the IAX2 trunk to VoipJet and saves us tons of money. If you dial a 8 or 393 prefix before the number, it assumes you want to call a FWD number, and routes it out the IAX2 trunk to FWD, which would be a direct SIP to SIP call for free.

In summary, it works awesome, and I had the whole thing working in a basic way (PSTN + analog phone + VoipJet trunk) in one Saturday morning. I had rerouted the whole house's phone system and revam

Well the obvious answer (at least to me) is Asterisk. If you don't want a "computer running all the time" build a small box, well.... tuff. Think Mini-ITX. You can put a small HD in in, and put it in a small case. If its only "diverting" calls it doesn't need much power or storage space at all and wouldn't draw much power (also, if you do it right - it could be all passive cooled).

Also - I'm sure no one wants to spend _that much time_ setting up Asterisk, so use TrixBox (Formely Asterisk@Home) instead.