Open source software is a really wonderful idea. And if you like that then open source hardware should prove to be attractive as well. The folks at the Village Telco Project in South Africa have recently posted an interesting bit…
For the past few years a little USB speakerphone has been a constant fixture on my desk. This fact was initially driven by my UK-based coworkers who have a habit of using Skype. Most of the Skype traffic was simply IM, but once in a while it would escalate to a voice call. In those cases I needed a suitable audio device, but it wasn’t routine enough to merit keeping a headset immediately available.
Over time I started to see increasing value in using other soft phones as well. At first it was for the convenience of being able to effectively turn any PC I happened to be working on into a phone. The scope of this sometimes goes beyond telephony. For example, I’ve used a USB audio device to record screencast training movies. Since server class motherboards often don’t have built-in audio interfaces, using a USB attached device makes it possible to record the narrative of the training on the host system along with the screencast.
The .e4 blog has a good new post on power-over-ethernet, which I see as an often overlooked area of SOHO VoIP. It goes into some detail P.O.E. network switches, power management and mid-span P.O.E injectors. Just last week we suffered…
Earlier today someone started a thread about FWD over at the VoIP Tech Chat forum on http://www.broadbandreports.com. Several forum regulars questioned the status of FWD, which is a fair question as not much has been heard from those involved. Certainly the web site has changed, and a lot of the old resource material seems to have gone away.
So after months of badgering people about G.722 based wideband capabilities in soft phones I’ve settled on using Counterpath’s Eyebeam v1.5 as my principle soft phone. I have it installed on my laptop and netbook, both systems that travel with me all the time.
Having finally found a soft phone that I lets me take advantage of the wideband capabilities of our hosted IP-PBX installation I was left to consider the audio I/O requirement in support of Eyebeam. To address this need I’ve recently been experimenting with both wired headsets and USB speakerphone devices. I started with the Plantronics .Audio 480 analog headset as detailed previously.
It started out an uneventful day, the third day in an entire week that I expected to spend in my home office. That’s something of a rarity in recent times. I was enjoying it, catching up on matters around here, and addressing tech support calls as they arose. I was on just such a call when, to my considerable surprise, the power went out.
The sudden loss of power is not enough to disrupt my phone call beyond my own expression of surprise. As I’ve documented elsewhere, I’ve taken steps to ensure that critical infrastructure around here is on a UPS. To paraphrase Frank Herbert, “The electrons must flow.” In fact, it occurred to me that this afternoon was an opportune time to ascertain just how sound my planning had been.