Michael Graves

The Path To Whole House Audio: Parts 1 & 2

March 25, 2008
Michael Graves
Audio

Part 1 – Death By Canine Misadventure

Perhaps I should title this series as “A Geeky, Mildly Unorthodox Approach To Whole House Audio.” I’m not kidding. That bit about the dog really happened…more or less.

This is Shadow our five-year-old purebred Labrador Retriever. He is responsible for very little around la maison du Espinosa-Graves, being the lesser quadruped of the group. Yet in January of 2006 he brought about the expiry of my older, much loved Carver stereo system. This set in motion a series of events that has me rethinking my understanding of whole house audio, home theater, networking and media.

Blogging Light This Month, Whole House Audio Series En Route

March 25, 2008
Michael Graves
Uncategorized

From mid-March until late in April is just crazy busy in my day job, so my posting schedule its likely to be light over this period. However, for a number of weeks I've been working on a series that rambles…

The Star2Star Distributed PBX & Astlinux

March 20, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

John Bartlett over at CMP's No Jitter blog has posted an item from VoiceCon about Star2Star's offering which he characterizes as a "distributed PBX." He's right, it's interesting stuff. What he didn't mention is that one of the significant people…

Updating Firmware On The snom m3

March 16, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

This afternoon I finally took some time to update the firmware in the snom m3 phone system. The phones arrived early in January loaded with v1.01, but in the eight weeks since then snom has released v1.07.

Polycom IP200W SIP-DECT Cordless Phone RSN

March 16, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

Is this new Polycom cordless phone a snom m3 in Polycom clothing? It sure looks that way. According to VOIP Insider, the blog from VOIP Supply, Polycom is readying the release of their new IP200W cordless SIP-DECT phone. The post…

Portech GSM Gateway: Observations Based On The First 20 Calls

March 13, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

The first part of this week required that I be in Austin, TX working at a customer’s site. This is the sort of trip where I drive to and from as opposed to flying. It’s three hours drive each way, which means listening to XM radio and making phone calls.

A number of times during the period I had to call the UK to consult with associates. As much as possible I tried to do this via the newly installed Portech MV-370 GSM gateway. I’ve made around 20 calls to the UK through the gateway so far.

Remember from our prior installment that have it setup for two-stage dialing, passing incoming cellular calls out through Junction Network’s OnSIP hosted PBX.