July 2014 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Ubiquiti Networks Announces New VoIP Hardware

July 31, 2014
Michael Graves
VoIP

Several folks have reported that yesterday Ubiquiti Networks sent out a marketing email announcing a new line of VoIP products under their UniFi brand. A quick look at the information offered online reveals some very nice looking hardware. Very nice indeed.

The hardware includes a trio of handsets; UVP, UVP-Pro and UVP-Executive. All are Android powered, reported run Kit Kat (v4.4.2) on dual core Cortex A9 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz. They all sport 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of local storage.

The entry-level UVP model is a bit feature constrained in order to hit a $149 MSRP.

The UVP and UVP-Pro are more-or-less mobile phone-ish in that they feature a 5” capacitive touch screen resolving 640 x 960 pixels. The UVP-Executive is more tablet-like, with a 7” capacitive touch screen resolving 1024 x 600 pixels.

Audio codec support includes; G.722, Speex, iLBC, PCMU,PCMA and GSM. Thus they are capable of wideband telephony.

VUC500: A Special Event Featuring Dr. Henning Schulzrinne

July 30, 2014
Michael Graves
Video, VoIP

Friday, August 1st will see Dr. Henning Schulzrinne appearing as our featured guest for the 500th(!) edition of the VoIP Users Conference. While presently the CTO of the FCC, Dr. Schulzrinne has along history as a pioneer in the field…

Good NAS Going Bad

Our household NAS, known as HAL, is suffering. A LaCie 5Big Network Drive, HAL arrived in December of 2008 loaded with five 500 GB hard drives, yielding 2 TB of RAID 5 storage.

HAL was a Christmas present. He addressed my wife’s need for a storage strategy for her digital photographs, amongst other things. Within the family I was widely known as a geek. The fact that she welcomed a NAS as a gift cemented her standing in that regard.

HAL was twice upgraded such that he presently sports five 2 TB Seagate Barracuda hard drives configured for RAID 10 + a hot spare. One drive failed a couple of months ago. At that time it pulled in the hot spare, spending a weekend rebuilding the volume. No data was lost.

A VoIP Supply Q&A Batting .500!

July 24, 2014
Michael Graves
VoIP

Earlier this weeks a new blog post over at VoIP Supply caught my attention. It’s a Q&A item that addresses the Phoenix Audio Quattro 3 USB conference phone and the Polycom RealPresence Group 300 video conference end-point.

The first question posed was in reference to using the conference phone with a computer to access online services like Skype. In his reply VoIP Supply blogger Nathan Miloszewski is right on the money, the Quattro3 USB attaches to a host computer as a generic audio device. That means that any software-based client application can make use of it, from Windows Media Player to Counterpath’s Bria , Skype, Hangouts…whatever.

New Gear: Grandstream GXV3275

July 7, 2014
Michael Graves
Video, VoIP

Grandstream-gxv3275-right-300px Grandstream recently released a new model of desk phone, the GXV3275 Multimedia IP Phone for Android. A logical successor to their GXV3175 model, it’s been updated in a variety of ways. Most interestingly, it runs Android 4.2, aka Jelly Bean. This is most recent release of Android that I’ve encountered running on a dedicated desk phone.

My enthusiasm for smart desk phones arises at least in part from a desire to see telephones play a larger role in home automation. This desire I have expressed at various times over the years, although Dave Michels perhaps has gone further with respect to acting upon a similar desire.

Algo Solutions 8028: A Door Phone Solution For Our Front Gate

A few years back when I installed the analog DoorBell Fone I considered the Algo Solutions 8028 SIP Door Phone. It was the most appropriate option that I had found, but at $500 it was well outside my budget for the project. That was the principle reason that I opted for the analog DoorBell Fon. Not long after I installed the DoorBell Fon I met Pat Byrne of Algo Solutions at ITExpo West.

When the DoorBell Fon eventually failed I was forced to reconsider the situation at our front gate. I let that situation remain unaddressed for some time, until I eventually stumbled upon DoorBot. When DoorBot failed to impress I reached out to Pat, who kindly provided one of their 8028 SIP Door Phones for me to evaluate.

It has taken some time for me to get around to installing the Algo door phone. I was delayed because I wanted to have a small metal plate welded to to the fence post to create a proper mounting platform for the device.