Slashdot Mirror
Suggestions for Home PBX/Key System?
foobar104 asks: "I'm fascinated by the idea of putting in a home PBX or key system. I don't really have a good justification for this; it just sounds like a neat thing to have. There are commercially available small PBX systems available for $500 to $2,000, plus another $500 to $2,000 for voicemail, but putting in one of those doesn't sound like as much fun as building one from scratch using an older PC and some off-the-shelf components. I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for sources of information, tips, HOWTOs or other knowledge on this subject? I'm sure it's been done before; GNUCOMM and GNU Bayonne are out there, but I'm not having much luck finding tutorial-type info about them."
"The system I want to build doesn't need to be complicated. I'd like to have two outside lines and about five inside lines. I'd like the system to have all the standard cool features, like intercomm and station-to-station calls and such, but I'd also like to do some exotic things. For example, I'd like to implement a call whitelist system, where during certain hours of the day, only calls from numbers on a pre-defined "white list" ring through, and all other calls go to voicemail. I'm guessing that something like that will require programming, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I just don't know where to start.
It sounds like a fun hobby project-- to me anyway. Can anyone point me in the right direction?"
Why would you want a PBX system in your house? how many people live in your house?
My potato gun was confiscated by the United Nations. They said I wasn't allowed to have weapons of mash destruction.
Check out the Asterisk PBX system by Linux Support Services. http://asteriskpbx.org/
It is all linux based and the hardware is very nicely priced. I have this running at home and love it!
Some of the call filtering and voice mail things can be done with vgetty, an extension of mgetty. A $10 genero rockwell will do well with it. It's not a pbx but it's something for cheap.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
You might find this interesting. Search the page for 'PBX', it brings up some possibly useful links.
It's not a DIY project, but these people make an awesome phone system for home/home office use.
http://www.talkswitch.com/
You can get a 2-line or 4-line system, and new systems due out will be able to handle VoIP.
They're physically quite small, work with standard phones, regenerate caller-ID info (this was a killer for me, I couldn't find any other system that did it), programmable via PC.
I've had mine for over a year, and mostly use it for the auto-attendant to screen calls, ringdown to try me at home, if I don't answer forward them to my cell,and the built-in voicemail. It's awesome!
- Turbo
You can build a PBX with Intel (formerly Dialogic) "MSI" boards. The MSI can take an analog interface from the outside and generate ring and dial tone for your station sets. You can use an SC bus capable voice board for voice mail. Ought to be able to find this stuff on e-bay at a reasonable price. As for how-tos, there is a wealth of material on the dialogic/Intel support site Check out the various documentation, especialy the the "Application Notes." There are also forums you can join for free and folks on the forum are very knowledgeable. The bayonne user community is also very helpful. I've been dying to do this kind of project for years but haven't had the time. Enjoy!
You can always find pbx systems on E-bay relatively cheap. My house has a 15 year old system that I got out of an old office building. has 2 lines running into it, voice mail, and runs fine.
However, I want to kludge up something as well so here is my research for you.
http://www.mtnsys.com/ Software
http://www.openippbx.org/ Nix software
http://www.virtualpbx.com/ More software.
Hope this helps.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I hate it when an abreviation is thrown in my face without explanation. Am I the only one?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Come on! Search google ya dummy!
http://www.asteriskpbx.com/main/
Searching for PBX and Linux will get you Aaterisk. Asterisk is open source, works with widely available, relatively inexpensive hardware, runs linux, and is very flexible. Here is a feature list:
Extension routing logic
Simple but functional voicemail, including e-mail notification
Call bridging
Call transfer
Call parking
Intercom (using sound card)
Directory
Execute arbitrary commands
Simple configuration using text files
I've got faimly membrers in all the major calling areas in my state. My brother and I have pondered setting up a local calling network using Openh323 and cards from http://www.linuxjack.com/.
And...
I think you probably have two options. The biggest commercial effort in this area was called CyberGenie. I forget who made these units, but they are actually pretty neat. They no longer make them or anything, but they are on eBay for like ~$50... you can have up to 10 handsets I believe. The worst part of them is that the OS of the host machine has to be a Microsoft (ugh) and worse yet, Win98 is far and away the most supported OS. I'm on the CyberGenie mailing list (yeah, I guess I Dont get enough spam) and tons of people try to get these going with Win2000 and it isn't worth the trouble. Go ahead and Google for CyberGenie, it'll give you better information than I can give you.
Your other option is to go out and buy yourself a Dialogic Card and program one yourself. A Simple 4 line ISA card will cost you about $100 on eBay. We use Dialogic cards at my work (http://www.telecorpproducts.com) for some real time voice processing stuff. Well a previous developer bought the wrong model so I borrowed it and took it home. Some of the Dialogic models have Linux support. I popped it into my Linux box, and then developed a simple C app to capture the caller ID information coming into my phone w/ the fairly easy to use Dialogic API that dumps the CallerID info into a MySQL DB. Then a simple PHP page to query the DB and viola.. from anywhere in the world I can see who's been callin our casa.
From there it's pretty easy to do voice processing, transfers, etc... At work we take the raw voice coming off the card, do some shifting around, and then pass that information off to a RealAudio SDK/Server to send real time voice over the Internet (specific to call center monitoring)..
Oh well, best of luck... you can either buy a canned, unsupported package or strike out on your own (and I hope open source the results so I can use it for my home!)
www.jackasscritics.com
Hi,
m unication_systems/default.asp ). They have a complete variety of systems and best of all, they accept plain old phones on almost all systems ! It's not for sure the last geeky thing but it works really well. I'm sure that you can find a good used system for a cheap price.
You can check thoses Panasonic PBX ( http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/com
I have one too - 8 extensions, 3 lines (2 connected). Panasonic PBX: takes key sets or analog sets
That is one of the most important variables: can you connect cheap analog sets, or must you use expensive key sets?
Used to be a phone engineer so it's an interesting hobby but also useful: share 2 lines, connect through, redirect fax calls to the fax, etc - recommend you buy a cheap analog PBX - few hunbdred bucks in Europe.
MW
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
"Real" PBX systems have very complex software. Basic call control is easy. Features, especially keyset emulation, take a lot of code. This isn't something to code yourself in your spare time. You might have fun adapting what's out there, but don't confuse "IP telephony" with a real PBX. IP phones are expensive and don't sound as good as circuit phones.
Standard PBX systems are designed for the famous "five nines" reliability. You don't get that from a regular PC -- for instance, PC hardware can't do hot swap, which any PBX worth its salt can.
If you're adventurous, you can cobble together "carrier grade" hardware nowadays using off-the-shelf cards in the Compact PCI (which is more accurately "collosal PCI") form factor plus the H.110 bus, which supports 4K time slots of TDM voice. Of course that's overkill for a home system, but some serious phone gear is built that way, using off-the-shelf Sparc or PowerPC CPUs.
linuxtelephony.org is likely of interest. It has some good information and, just as importantly, lots of good links.
Asterisk seems to be a strong, fully featured, GPL'ed PBX project which has some hardware associated with the project that seems to be pretty well priced.
I can't seem to find my other links but they're probably linked off of linuxtelephony.org.
Just a reminder, a home PBX might be cool, but if your phones go through a PBX, you need to make sure you have a regular phone in case the power goes out.
Many years ago I bought a complete system at a swap meet for $50. The electronics, the connectors, and a box full of phones. I've since bought another one for work. They don't have many new features, but they are solid as a rock. Systems show up on ebay all the time for less than $100.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
I've been searching for this sort of thing as well. Key features for me are:
1) Sidetracks telephone numbers not in a whitelist to a message which says something like "Telemarketers are unwelcome; others press 1 to ring through."
2) Encodes voicemail to MP3 and forwards it to my email box. That way I can use the mouse to slide forward and back through the message, save important messages easily, and listen to it on my OK computer speakers instead of the crappy speakerphone speakers.
Do any of the mentioned systems support that sort of thing?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
As stated before, Intel sells a nice MSI card available in both PCI and ISA form factors. I have developed for the cards under both NT and 2000 and both platforms seem to run stable. There are several SDKs available for the cards, but the one we choose to use was 'Visual Voice' by Pronexus. It was a toolkit available for VisualBasic which worked well, but I dont believe it is being sold anylonger.
Intel has a SDK made by them for the boards, and the boards come in various flavors. There are boards for use with T1/E1s, ISDN lines, MSI systems and there is also a board that can be used for general TAPI applications such as an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. As for Intels SDK, it seems to be able to be used in both VisualBasic and C++.
More info can be found at http://www.dialogic.com
the latest print issue of Linux Journal has an article on Bayonne...
wha? you don't subscribe? tsk...
Though you won't get an CTI capabilities, there are a few consumer vendors who are making multi handset cordless systems that have many PBX like features, including multiple lines, station to station calls, directory features etc-We have a 2.4 Ghz Siemens system with two handsets that only cost about $100 Canadian from a surplus liquidator. I think Sony and Panasonic also make such systems.
Another route is to buy a used Nortel Norstar system from some of the hundreds of key system vendors out there. Unfortunately they can get expensive but the telsets and ATA adapters often end up in junk and surplus shops or the local Goodwill for really cheap.
Calum
The wife (who is a phone tech by day) says you need a Toshiba DK40 + Stratagy voice mail. I've programmed the DK 424 myself (with the add-on computer interface) and have to say it wasn't too bad. Don't let the sales guy tell you you can program it all through the phone though :)
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
You might try VOCP. Good open source call routing system. Even has web integration for retrieving your calls over a network.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The one thing that would concern me with making your own PBX out of an old PC and some CTI cards is reliability. What if the system crashes and someone needs to dial 911 or another emergency service?
Keep at least one analog 500 set wired directly to a trunk/outside line.
Calum
You might have fun adapting what's out there, but don't confuse "IP telephony" with a real PBX. IP phones are expensive and don't sound as good as circuit phones.
Standard PBX systems are designed for the famous "five nines" reliability. You don't get that from a regular PC -- for instance, PC hardware can't do hot swap, which any PBX worth its salt can.
IP Telephony can sound just as good or better than traditional telephony. With the Cisco gear we had (Call Manager and 7560 Phones) you could specify the bandwidth used, and on the high settings and low compression it was crystal clear. So don't just throw around statements saying IP telephony sucks.
Oh yeah, and another thing, that same Cisco IP telephony system was based on regular rebranded Compaq servers that Cisco had made sure were nice and stable. Oh yeah and they garunteed "five nines".
Dealing with phone lines is a PITA. Look at the innards of something like a Panasonic PBX ( I've had one in the house for 10+ years), and one of the first things you notice is that a large percentage of the circuitry deals with spike and surge protection for all the lines going in and out of the box.
I've thought about homebrewing a system, but don't have a 30 hour day just yet. The panasonic box is reliable -- it just sits in the closet and works. Oh, when power fails, it automagically switches the CO (incoming) lines to the first n extensions, so you're not totally screwed.
Features with unintended consequences department: One cool feature of the panasonic system is the doorbell boxes. Put one on the front door, and you can answer the door from any phone connected to the system. Unfortunately when I first set up the system, the front door also rang the extension with the answering machine on it. We went away for the weekend -- when we returned, we found that the answering machine had been answering the front door! Oops! A "simple matter of programming" fixed that.
I really appreciate the info people are giving.
I've been wanting to do this in my home for my small business for a while but I've never known how to do it.
The features I really really want are:
1. CallerID being stuffed into a MySQL database.
2. Filtering rules for callerID to serve up special messages for special people.
3. 44.1 16bit message recording. I know it's overkill but I have never found a home based digital answering machine that is even halfway decent quality. Does anyone know of one? I'm using a Sony right now and it's awful.
From then on, everything else is just extra good stuff.
I might keep in touch with you if you don't mind and let you know what I find.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I have a siemens gigaset system in my house and I love it. Only the base station plugs into the POTS line, everything else is 2.4G wireless. You can have 2 outside lines and up to 7 cordless handsets. The sysetm has intercom and voice mail. (I have 802.11b and no interference)
If the call manglers were so nice and stable, why did 5 of them hit my web server within days of code red? List price on a 25 station system at that time was somewhere in the range of US$40,000.
If you don't want all the fancy stuff, it does look like IOS will suport the voice cards on the smaller modems so a call manager isn't needed any more but it will take quite a long time to set up.
I myself would just see about buying a used system. Try here or here.
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
AltiGen Communications (http://www.altigen.com) makes a very nice PC based PBX - with support for open H.323 VoIP, Traditional Analog trunks & extensions, and T1/PRI services.. You can find used systems on E-bay for very resonable prices. Their smallest system configuration is 4x8 (4 incoming analog trunks, 8 analog extensions)
;-)
It does require an MS OS (NT or 2000 Server) - probably the only downside.
I too work in the industry.
One thing I'd like to use that for is to leave messages for people who call in by letting them enter a PIN.
The only problem is the software, the projects on sourceforge don't seem to be that far along yet
I'd also check out VoIP for intercoms. There is opensource software for that. You could build your own VoIP intercoms/phones with a single board computer with built-in sound, or a usb soundcard, or the Creative Labs VoIP Blaster (there's oss called Fobbit to use that with Linux)
3com makes an over priced "VoIP" system called the NBX 100. We got one of these for work and when we got a second office, we got another one. Its custom 486 pc like device that has all its devices hooked off a 10mb ethernet network. Its os is vxWorks. This seems to be a nice system for the geeky house if you can find one at a firesale. They have all the cool things like tapi so windows boxes and do stuff, they have pc soft phones. Of course they only support windows and won't desribe the packets that go over the wire (which aren't voip, but raw ethernet packets). I've got tcpdump and I'm slowly figuring out whats going on. The phones seem to be good but expensive and you want to keep them on their own port on a switch or at least away from links you want to be fast. For more details google for "nbx rant"
Really?
I mean, unless you have a crap-load of people calling you (unlikely) why would you subject yourself to the proprietary systems of a PBX/Key system?
A $40 Voicemail system is just fine, thank you.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Surplus sites and auction sites like Ebay are good for this sort of thing. Myself, I have a Computone Executech II key system with nice lcd speakerphones and programmable button consoles. I got the PBX and 15 phones on ebay for $65+s/h. While it is true you can't plug in a plain old telepohone (POTs), Even these old proprietary phone systems have some "auxilary" jacks on them for regular analog devices (fax machines, etc) you may want to use at an extension. I was able to use google groups to find all the pertinent wiring information before I even bid on it.
I use this phone system in conunction with vgetty and this. If someone calls in and the VOCP system answers, you can do all the standard voicemail stuff, you can issue a page to my email pager, send a fax(which can be forwarded to email) or I can even dial into the system and get a PPP dial-up connection if I'm on the road and otherwise don't have internet.
There are a lot of cool and useful things that you could do with open box PC based PBX (here in Australia they are referred to as PABX, hav no idea why). I especially dream of all the cool things that you could do by integrating the PBX with an SME's ERM database , maintaining phone logs for every customer, bringing up the customers details based on caller-id.
My question is just how much do you need the co-operation of the telco to get a system like this to work , i.e I might want 4 lines in but I don't want 4 different numbers, is there an open standard, or am I forced to involve the telco in how I setup my PBX?
I picked one up for next to nothing that has four ports (four simultaneous voicemails) It came with a 286 (!) computer and a 100 meg hard drive that had hours and hours of recording time. DOS based of course (though I've heard that the newer ones use OS/2). As to a phone system...I'd look for small companies going out of business and offer to buy theirs cheap. A friend of mine got a Panasonic 10 line/25 phone digital system that way for 50 bucks (and he had to remove the PBX from the wall and unplug the phones).
I mean really why? I Like anyone would want multiple lines of telemarketers.....
Humm lets write Slashdot and have the populous write out project plan...
Phear The Phat Penguin
Well, how about saving money? With your own homegrown PBX you could program it to take advantage of pre-paid calling cards or 10-10- calling plans, which have dirt-cheap rates. With the right program, you'd pick up the phone, get the PBX dialtone, and just dial the number. Your PBX program would then select the most economical service to use for the number you dialed, dial the correct prefix, send your PID if necessary, complete the call and connect your phone. You'd get "dial 1-" simplicity like Qwest or AT&T but without their big city rates!
The Linux Answering Machine HOWTO is not exactly what you're looking for, but surely a good start.
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
I am relieved to find that I am not the only person who thinks the voice quality sucks. I couldn't belive how this expensive 2.4GHz phone was bested by an old Panasonic that wasn't even 900MHz!
I read your other post about 802.11b interference. How you get around depends on what options you have on both your phones and your Airport. 11b has 11 channels. Channels 1, 6, and 11 can coexist in the same area with no interference.
I have two access points covering my apartment, one in on 11, the other is on 6. I've avoided getting 2.4 Ghz phones just because no one publishes information as to how flexible the setup options are.
Ideally, you'd have your Airport on 11, and configure your phones to the range between 1 and 6, allowing you to get around any interference from your microwave or neighbors.
Once the phones get within 5 channels of your airport, your 802.11b is going to suffer. Sounds like that's exactly what happened.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
http://vovida.org
:)
:)
:)
There you'll find a scalable open source softpbx that's scalable to the 5000 phone range. It's got Cisco research dollars pouring into it, and it's currently free. They have a soft client too! This thing has billing modules, h323 compatibility gateways.. Works with Cisco's VERY cool sip phones
It really is aimed at the carrier type people.. but hell..it's pretty easy to get it all running on a P2-450
Take it easy all
-=-Ze End-=-
Two words: Conference call!
-- Terry
This is the reason why sound is such a difficult thing in linux and other royalty free operating systems.
If it were easy - we'd have a ton of voice solutions that all the 800lbs gorillas would be paying absolutely nothing for to wire up all the states and commonwealths and borroughs of america to share information like all the big important laws of the last couple of decades try to promise.
wait - nevermind.
-v
Dialogic is the standard in the PBX industry. If you use Dialogic boards, you can be assured of compatibility with the most software, and a long useful life for your hardware.
On the other hand, Intel is good only with microprocessors, m. support chips, and motherboards. It might not be a good thing that Intel bought Dialogic. (Intel closed its consumer electronics division after many, many blunders.)
System Release 5.1 for RedHat Linux
So, 8 kHz x 4 = 32 kHz, right? 44.1 kHz is a common standard so it makes sense to use it.
This wouldn't be an issue if the waveform delivered over the phone lines was a digital signal. It's not, it's an analog wave.
Funny, +1 would be reasonable.
Remember humour is appreciated!
I can't speak for how they do things in Oz, but in the US you can get (for example) four lines that are assigned to what they call a rotary group, or a hunt group. That means that the four lines get used in a round-robin fashion as calls come in. The first person to dial your number gets your line 1. The next person to dial the same number rings in on line 2, and so on, until it loops around again. So basically you're getting four lines with just one phone number.
You can use a PBX with any number of incoming lines (as long as that number is at least one) and with any service from your telco. So the question of whether you buy a rotary group of lines or lines with distinct numbers is entirely up to you.
Get an analog SIP gateway, like the one sold by mediatrix.
Then, a VoiceXML Interpreter.
The calls come in the gateway, and get handled by the interpreter, which runs on standard PC hardware. You can configure the interpreter to run different VoiceXML apps based on the caller ID info. You can specify any kind of voicemail app you want in VoiceXML, complete with touch tone and speech recognition.
While you're at it, you can write other vxml apps accessible only to certain people, verified with biometric voiceprint authentication. Here's a scenario: You forgot your housekey. Your electronic garage door opener, however, is hooked up to an X-10 device.
Computer: Hello, would you like to leave a message?
You: This is Joe Shmoe.
Computer: Voiceprint identified. How can I help you?
You: Open the garage.
BTW, the Nuance interpreter comes free with a 2 port license (handles 2 calls simultaneously). Any more than that, and they start charging. The software includes the speech recognition, voiceprint authentication, and voicexml interpreter.
Neat, eh?
-----
Kvetch is Yiddish for "throw an exception" --Dr. Ron Cytron
I found the Nortel VoIP phones were as good as other PBX system, but it was setup by having a special card sitting in a meridian 1 switch, running on 100MB ethernet hooked up to a Nortel shasta.. great fun. and all the features you could ever want. (IVR, voice mail, etc...) - but not really a setup you would have in a domestic environment, purely because of cost and rack space required.
The ciscos VoIP kit by comparison never worked any where near as well and were very disapointing - if you have a choice always go for the nortel, or at least test out the ciscos for yourself before you buy (they may have improved and/or have a configuration that works for you..)
am I forced to involve the telco in how I setup my PBX
It entirely depends on what you want to do. Many PBX systems are perfectly happy sitting on a single POTS line. One caller ties up the entire system except extension to extension calls. This is what you commonly find at very small stores where you ring in and then punch up an extension. Busy's are common. The system is referred to as a key system. A user has to select one of the unused outside lines to place a call and has to select one of the ringing lines (or line on hold) to answer a call.
A Private Branch Exchange is much more than a fancy termination for a POTS phone line. They run on some trunk lines. This does require some work on the Telco end to make it work. On the Key system, if one line is busy, callers would have to try later or try one of the other lines numbers. The Telco can have it so if the primary number is busy, it will roll over to a secondary number.
On a trunked system, it is entirely diffrent. You can select diffrent numbers of incomming and outgoing trunks. In-comming calls and outgoing calls are placed on the first avaliable trunk. (you may have seen this, Dial 9 to get an outside line, not pick up line 3) Incomming calls as well as outgoing lines are trunked seprately. An example is an order desk using an 800 number. (operators standing by...) Many calls can be received limited by the number of incomming trunk lines and avaliable operators. The call center may have as few as 2 outgoing lines. A telemarketing center may have hundreds of outgoing trunk lines but just a few incomming lines.
Another class of trunk is called DID, for Direct Inward Dial. You most likely have seen this for paging and not known it. A paging company may buy a block of 1,000 phone numbers and have them placed on 20 trunk lines. When you dial the regular phone number to call a pager, it picks up any free trunk line to the paging switch (sometimes as few as 10 trunk DID lines) and the phone company sends the last 3 digits of the dialed number. This way 1,000 phone numbers will fit on 10 or so lines. The calls are short so few callers will experiance a busy.
DID lines are used for many PBX's so you direct dial a department or persons desk without dialing an extension. You can get DID for 1-5 digits to cover 2-100,000 phone numbers. A 1 digit DID does not require reserving all 10 numbers, 2 digit 100 numbers, etc. Getting 20 numbers reserved on a 2 digit DID can be done. My work phone is an example of this. To save on copper wire, all of the trunks can be multiplexed on an ISDN line or dedicated fiber optic line.
Going trunked is overkill for home use. Look for stuff that will work on a POTS line. Some stuff is set up for trunked service and may support DID or ISDN.
The truth shall set you free!
-Simon
not quite a pbx, but you could use VOCP to do things like page a pager when a certain voicemail box has a message, accept credit card numbers, and run perl scripts to do whatever you want.
www.vocpsystem.com
I'm trying to get it to work for my business so that it pages me depending on which mailbox a message is left in. I know that in theory I can link it into a credit card validator and a bunch of other things but I'm not there yet.
http://www.ahlers.nl/shop/media/quatro.htm
If you can implement this, you'll kick Panasonic off the market. Lots of features in the lit, but nobody can figure out how to program them, so you end up with just another Radio Shack system. Most installs pay for voicemail, but never get it working.
BizFone has done what you propose, you should look at their website for starters.
But whatever you do, make it easy for the business user to program, that is, clean up the interface. You'll make a killing. Don't know how many times I've wanted outgoing messages based on calling number.
Gawd, our vendor wired it in and left. They can't even get the intercom to work. It has voicemail? Would never know it. If it was up to me, I would have sued them.
So, where can I buy documentation for this dammed $5000 white elephant? I contacted Panasonic 6 different ways, nobody there knows.
There is also some consideration to be given as to how the PBX picks up the phone lines coming into it. The typical telephone uses loop-start to pickup and line for an outgoing call. However, several older-style PBX systems uses ground-start. You'll need to have your lines configured by the telco depending on what kind you might need.
I had the task of setting up a PBX system for a 8 person office. I went with a BizFone system(www.bizfone.com). The system is really very easy to learn for both administrators and end-users. I was getting quotes around $12000 from other companies. Anyway this system cost us only $4000, and that's because we bought a second unit for expansion. You can get the single unit for $2000 with a couple of phones. In addition you can use regular phones with this system, you don't even need to buy the "Bizfone" phones. Overall, this system made my life easy, my boss happy(the cost was a lot less then he thought), and the end-users happy. I highly recommend.
I would recommend the Mitel SX-20. Great little pbx used by many motels and available pretty cheap used.
Mr Dialtone
Phone audio is only 300-3000 hz. With companding, and 4x sampling (which isn't necessary, remember nyquist) 11 khz @ 16 bits is the best you'll ever get from a phone line. That's assuming you're still on an analog exchange.
:-)
If your exchange is digital, 8 khz @ 8-bits is more than enough.
HTH! I can provide references to these limitations, if you want them!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Consider the value of your time!
It's really a waste of your time if you want to have a reliable, maintainable, system. The price of a small Panasonic keysystem is worth it, and there are plenty of places that support them. You'll end up with a much better solution plus if you're putting this in your house, it'll *increase* the resale value of your house. A roll-your-own solution based on a trash pc will *decrease* the value of your house.
-a.e.mossberg
Lucent Cybergear Gold are good, http://aa.nu/isdn/nacyber.html
You can pick up the complete system off Ebay for about $120 (search for Cybergenie), and there is an updated driver set (3.0) which allows use with WinXP. The manufacturer went out of business several years ago, so there isn't any warrenty. There is a large user base for support, including a dedicated MSN newsgroup (just do a google search for Cybergenie to get links).
It works well, and is relatively inexpensive, and links into my email inbox. Good enough for me.
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
Simple if power goes out - make sure you have a UPS - almost all PBX have internal support. If not add and external unit. There cheap starting at about $100.00 or may be less. If your really cheap there are plain on the NET to make your own.
What was that old saying?
911 - To save a life, stop a crime, report a fire?
I totally support that anyone who calls 911 when there isn't an emergency (such as you said, illegal parked cars, watering during bans, etc), should be liable for a ~$100 fine... and repeat "accidental" 911 calls should be the same (tho I'm not sure how that could be tracked with any serious accuracy).
The ONE time I've needed it (knock on wood) in my life it was there and working and the police were down in like 90 seconds... so I've bought multiple tickets to that stupid policeman's ball every year since =)
has 2 inexpensive pbx's, somtimes under $100 on ebay.
The low end unit has 3 outside lines and 8 inside, the other 4 outside and
16 inside.
I use it with a voiceworks voicemail system I got for $300 on ebay.
It does have caller ID support and RS232 out, so you could do some call filtering there, but it is not as clean as a PC based would be.
I do really like it, I got it when I built my office and guesthouse and had to have an easy way to share phonelines and intercom. The side result is I only get about 1 telemarketer call every 3 months now, since they never dial through the greeting, and everyone has there own voicemail box. People at my company can also call me at 11PM at my office and not wake the house, totally cool.
I have 2 outside lines and 1 VOIP line plugged into the outside which works
well for all.
The great thing about it is that it uses regular phones and cool keyphones, your choice, and it is analog, so modems and fax machines work well on the inside.
This is definatly the way to go on a budget. Under $500 you should be good to go.
mycal
Nice rant, and in concept I agree with you. However, the sad fact is that many emergency service organizations don't publish their 7/10-digit number anymore. Some of them won't even give it to you if you call 9-1-1 and say "this isn't really an emergency, do you have a non-emergency number where I can call you back?"
Many of the police/fire/EMS departments that don't give out phone numbers other than 9-1-1 say it is because of potential legal liability. They say that if someone calls the 7/10-digit number and turns out to have a real emergency, then someone gets hurt or dies as a result of the emergency, the department has a high probability of being successfully sued. Their thinking is that at least if the caller calls 9-1-1, the department can use "we took all reasonable steps" as a defense.
This logic appears flawed in several ways. As you noted, it ties up the limited number of 9-1-1 trunks. What happens if a homeowner's monitored alarm system (ADT, for example) detects a fire and notifies the call center. The call center doesn't have a phone number on file for any of the appropriate municipality's emergency services. What to do? I can just hear the conversation now:
"Seattle 9-1-1, what is your emergency?"
"This is the ADT call center, I need to report a fire to the Luchenbach, Texas fire department."
"Sir, you'll have to call them directly. I don't have a way to transfer you out of state."
"I can't call them directly, they don't publish their phone numbers."
"I'm sorry, sir, I can't help you."
[Disclaimer: I have no idea whether Luchenbach emergency service numbers are published or not. I just used that city for the sake of example.]
How about a whole bank vault??? :)
I worked in competitive analysis at Lucent (now Avaya) 4-5 years ago. Some of our competitors used Dialogic boards in their systems, and part of my job was cost analysis - In small quantities, even basic Dialogic boards were $1500 or so. You could get MAJOR volume discounts, but to drop the price below $500 you needed to buy a LOT of boards. (You could get thr price to below $300-400 if you bought enough IIRC...)
Cool hardware, but WAY too much $$$$$ unles prices have gone down.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The Seimens 2.5GHz wireless phone system also has voicemail capabilities in the two-line, 8-extension version. You end up with the pbx features [intercom, shared directory] along with the convenience of wireless operation. Just don't try to talk on the fern when you're nuking up a burrito.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
(here in Australia they are referred to as PABX, hav no idea why)
:^)
A = Automatic. Unlike the manual ones in other countries
Hehehe, its funny when I see you computer folks stagger into my industry! (I've worked for both the phone co and business systems dealers, I'm certified on several switches) I agree with most of the people- building a PBX isn't an easy task, but if your really interested, I'm working an analog system right now using a basic stamp as the cpu (basic stamp II will do neat things like output all the progress tones [busy, dialtone, etc]) will post nfo as it becomes available. I would HIGHLY recommend against using a PC for any type of PBX system (cough cough, Intertel's failed Axxent platform) they are just not reliable enough for anything other then a voicemail.. If you want a quick fix, Panasonic is tops for home users, and it seamlessly integrates with systems such as HAI/On Q's home automation products. ESI also makes an all in one cheap digital keyset called the IVX 128 plus (http://www.esi-estech.com) The nice thing about the IVX over the Panasonic is you can snap on a VoIP module- phones are expected to be SIP compliant soon) IVX' has a built in voicemail, built in MoH, true caller ID integration, etc, etc. email me [zeropanic at bellsouth dot net] if you need any extra info, will be glad to provide it. Intertel and Comdial have new entry level platforms as well, but I imagine the intertel will cost you your wife,kids and your soul (over priced) and the Comdial DX-80 is very buggy right now.
Does anyone actually know what the PBX market is for residential apps (single-family and MDU)? I'm trying to hunt down some research. If anyone could point me in the right direction, I'm sure I can provide you with something interesting (I work for Leviton)...Heh...
Bernard