There still seems to be a lot of interest in DIY Asterisk appliances. Make that DIY PBX appliances in general, because the Freeswitch folks are just as active in this regard. My prior article giving an overview of suitable target…
Sometimes the simplest questions result in the most interesting path of investigation. So it has been with Soljon’s initial question;
I am looking for an IP phone that supports G.722 and has audio inputs / outputs so I can connect it to my mixer. We are trying to connect two studios together for an online radio station. I have yet to find anything other than high end Polycom gear that has something like RCA in/out jacks. Have you by any chance come across anything?
In part 1 I addressed Soljon’s question about how to physically connect a G.722 capable SIP phone to a traditional audio mixer for use in an online radio project.
I understand and appreciate the intention to use a phone as the audio interface device. Phones are effectively appliances, offering excellent audio quality combined with simplicity of operation and high reliability.
This very logic leads me to use my Polycom IP650 in some unusual ways. For example, when I occasionally guest host the VUC calls I will call the ZipDX wideband conference bridge on one line, then call the Talkshoe G.711 bridge on a second line and perform an on-phone conference to connect the two bridges. Finally I engage the call recording function on the IP650 to give me an uncompressed WAV recording of the entire call.
Selecting hardware appropriate for a particular Asterisk installation has been a topic of discussion ever since the emergence of Asterisk. This typically centers around choosing hardware to handle n users or x concurrent calls. Often the focus is on how to scale up to the greatest number of users for a given server. However, there can be different but related considerations as we consider ever smaller applications.
In various circles I’ve lately witnessed a minor spike in interest in small form factor Asterisk systems. I have found it curious to survey the various hardware platforms that people are considering when creating their own DIY Asterisk Appliances. To establish some perspective on this I recently posted my own history of using Asterisk my own little Asterisk retrospective.
There are quite a range of small computing platforms available to the enthusiast seeking to tinker with Asterisk. It seemed to me that an overview of such hardware and related resources would be helpful.
For my purposes I’ll only consider generic platforms suitable for a DIY project , not the commercially offered embedded Asterisk devices, of which there are many. These small host platforms tend to be in the $50-$300 range which makes them approachable for hobbyists, home users and some small businesses.
A little over a year ago I lamented the sad state of the telecom realm with respect to soft phones, and specifically wideband audio support in soft phones. In the passing year considerable progress has been made.
Counterpath, true to their word, released retail versions of Eyebeam & Bria that support G.722…at least on Windows. Similar wideband support on the Mac platform is now in beta, or so we’ve heard.
I am just such a sucker for little embedded systems platforms. It started with the Soekris Net4501, but I’ve also used the Soekris Net4801, ALIX boards and HP thin clients in appliance-like roles. Most recently I bought a FIT-PC2 to use as a little Astlinux server.