I’m playing around with a package called Asterisk. It’s an open-source PBX. Simply put, and office phone system. Or even better yet, do you know what Vonage is? It’s kind of like the equipment THEY have to allow you to access the Internet. Of course theirs is bigger, costs more, takes up more space and is much cooler. lol
Basically, I can hook up an Internet Phone to any Internet connection and make and recieve calls from my home phonelines (Yes, I have 2!)… I can even transfer calls between different extensions, music on hold, and my favorite, a customizable IVR…
So give me a call at 516-390-7191 (I know. It doesnt spell anything cool! It sucks!) Leave me a message, or give me some ideas what to do with the system.
Dude, I hate you!! You are such a geek!! Now I am going to have to check this out. Damn you!! About 10 years ago my friend was supposed to hook me up with something like this so I could give out voicemail to friends & family. I had a few other uses for it that I was thinking about but nothing came of it. But this looks interesting. You know one of these days (when I get a real job) I am going to hook you up with a fat consultant’s pay.
Me again. I don’t really hate you, I actually secretly want to have your children 🙂 “So give me a call at 516-390-7191 … Leave me a message, or give me some ideas what to do with the system.”
I’ve used restraint in the past. Like it’s 1am. Do you have a message on it? Press 1 to hear me singing in the shower, press 2 to hear me snoring… LOL.
No. I am a wanna be geek. I’ve looked at it but I am not sure this is what I was thinking it was. I was going to get a voicemail system. The phone call would come in, the computer would answer it with a prerecorded message & users would enter the extention they wanted to leave a voicemail for someone. The voicemail would be stored on the computer until the owner called the same number & accessed their messages.
Kinda sorta like the dating chat lines. I was going to market it out to schools so teachers can have voicemail, since they can’t recieve phone calls in school & also so they can leave messages daily so parents will know exactly what homework has to be done or something like that. That was my intentions at the time. I would still love to do that. Do you have any idea as to what software/hardware set up I need to do that?
I am dead serious about the consultant’s pay. So hook me up & I’ll give you a piece of my million.
The software is called Asterisk. http://www.asterisk.org/
It’s a VOIP PBX. You can download an ISO image wich is a complete Asterisk system. You burn it to CD, Boot a PC with it and it formats the HDD, installed the operating system (CentOS, Basically a repackaged version of RedHat Enterprise Linux), and installs all the components necessary for the system.
I spent about $25 on eBay to buy 2 compatible modems for my 2 phone lines, and installed the CD on a spare PC I had (Dual P2/450Mhz, 512MB Ram, 8GB HDD)
It works great so far, though for phones I need to use a PC based softphone. They’re free… IP phones run anywhere from $60 to $300 (There’s plenty around $60-$100 though). You can get adapters for $60 to $100 also to connect an existing phoneline/analog phone to the system as well.
The system is easy to configure/set up, and seems pretty flexible. How well it would do what you want, I don’t know, but i only just started playing with it. I have maybe 6 hours of experience on my hands at this point 🙂
I’m going to try to use it while away this weekend to make calls from Ohio through my home phoneline (on which I have free calling nationwide)
Oh… There’s a great site with a really easy step-by-step guide to setting up asterisk. You could have it running in about an hour:
Build your own PBX
This is one of many reasons why I love you!! 🙂
You *know* that I do not understand 90% of your posts, right? But then I can’t even figure out my new
POS!!!!!cellphone. And the sad thing is, I am more technologically advanced than most of my friends.Anyway, kudos to you for doing some techie phone thingie.
Well, I am a tech geek, so some of my posts will be more technical.
If you need me to simplify, I built a computer based office phone system with extensions, voicemail, etc…
And if you need someone to help you program your cellphone, give me a buzz..
lol, if by program you mean throw out the freaking window…then I’m all for it.
I actually know HOW to do it. I just hate it. I want a Razor, but verizon doesnt have one.
And I *did* get the gist of what you did, but it was like reading the New York Times. I knew 70% of the words and the others I just faked.
Anyway, still very cool. Now explain this “geocaching” to me…
“geocaching”, simply put, is best described as running into the woods with a $200 device looking for kids toys 🙂
People all around the world have placed “Caches” (based on caches left by western settlers as they were exploring America) and posted to a website, Geocaching.com, the exact Latitude and Longitude of the cache.
A Cache can be many things, but mainly it’s some type of container with various trinkets and a log book for signing. The idea is to locate a cache, and trade an item. Feel free to take something, and leave something in it’s place. In addition, your asked to sign a log book cataloging your visit and also add an entry to the website so you can track how many and which caches you’ve found/not found/etc…
Some caches are just landmarks that would be hard to find if you didn’t know about them. Others are locations of clues towards a puzzle that will eventualy get you to the actual “Cache”. I’ve even heard of city tour caches where the first coordinate is to a landmark in an area, and contains the coordinates for the next “point of interest”.
If you have a handheld GPS or are just curious, check out http://www.geocaching.com
it sounds like a lot of fun.
It is.