Ho John Lee’s Weblog

I spent the whole day this past Saturday at Barcamp, arriving at 10am and not making it all the way out the door until almost 1:30am. I didn’t know any of the organizers beforehand, so it was nice to be met by someone (who turned out to be Andy Smith) keeping an eye out for new arrivals.

I’ve been working with so many either geographically dispersed or very buttoned down corporate teams lately that it’s been a long time since I’d spent this much time in non-stop, face-to-face, somewhat random yet unpredictably creative conversations with a bunch of just-do-it tech hackers. Spent the entire time there going from one interesting presentation to another, with several interesting discussions thrown in along the way.

In a previous post I observed that the PhoneGnome looks like a SPA-3000, with a simpler configuration process for normal people who aren’t interesting in hacking their phone system.

Today, PhoneGnome is offering to convert unlocked SPA-3000 hardware into PhoneGnome adapters for $34.95. (link)

Not sure if you can undo the firmware change afterwards, or what’s in their load. I may check this out when I get some time for Asterisk and phone hacking.

See also: Using the SPA-3000 as an Asterisk PSTN Trunk, PhoneGnome Analog to VOIP adapter

Update 08-23-2005 - the upgrade offer appears to be temporarily suspended, due to configuration issues between various customer supplied SPA-3000 hardware.

Om Malik writes about a new product called the PhoneGnome, which combines an analog phone line and a LAN port for use with a VOIP service.

But the best part about the gizmo is that, when you try and outgoing call, it basically uses your selection of service provider to place that outgoing call. For someone else with a PhoneGnome to call you for free. They would not have to dial any different number or address. For instance, if my # is 415-555-1212, (and I have PhoneGnome), as a PhoneGnome user, you call 415.555.1212. In case I don’t have PhoneGnome, your call will get routed over the PSTN. On this website, my.phonegnome.com website, PhoneGnome can select a provider for national long-distance, international calls, or both, and select separate providers and plans for each.

Step-by-step article on using the Sipura SPA-3000 for Asterisk PSTN trunking at GeekGazette, via Sineapps:

For us serious Asterisk PBX geeks out there, the SPA-3000 provides a cost-effective means of bring a PSTN trunk into the PBX while still functioning as an ATA. Not only can you use the SPA-3000 as inbound and/or outbound trunk, you can also easily configure the SPA-3000 as a PSTN failover should the primary trunk into Asterisk fail. Considering what you can buy the SPA-3000 for right now, this is one of the best deals going.

I see from the GeekGazette site that Slashdot has been here as well.

This follows a recent firmware upgrade to the SPA-3000, as described at Voxilla a few days ago:

The enhancements to the SPA-3000, a very popular adaptor among “do-it-yourself” VoIP enthusiasts because of its built-in gateway functionality, includes an often-requested feature allowing PSTN calls to be routed directly to a VoIP destination without the SPA-3000 “answering” the PSTN line until the VoIP destination answers.

Last updated: April 5, 2005

Here are some notes on building multi-site VOIP PBX services using Asterisk and SIP Express Router.

General approach:
1. Use Asterisk for PBX functionality at each site
2. Use IAX for inter-site traffic to minimize NAT-related issues
3. Use SIP Express as a front end to SIP clients at single sites

Platform technology:
Both Asterisk and SIP Express Router run on Linux and don’t require very powerful hardware. SIP Express in particular can handle hundreds of calls on a small generic Intel-compatible server. Asterisk provides more extensive functionality, including voicemail, transcoding, and conferencing, and requires somewhat more server resource. For a small office scenario, any current Intel-compatible server should be adequate. In the recent GeekGazette article Kerry Garrison implements Asterisk on a Pentium II/450MHz/386MB RAM/12GB HDD/48x CD-ROM/Intel 10/100 system combined with a generic Intel Winmodem card for line access.

The Asterisk@Home project packages a pre-built CD image for Asterisk running on Linux

SIP Express Router installation is simple, and it can easily be downloaded and run nearly out of the box, especially if call accounting is not required.