Who is also running an Asterisk phone server as a hobby or is planning to do so?

[markosjal]

Most of all REGISTRATIONS are the limitation

[markosjal]

Volker, the phones in your pics are Ericssons? Like I used to see a lot of in Mexico? I always wanted a red one and never found one in good shape.

I Still have some of those parts around that were brought  back to USA from Mexico

[Volker]

The gray dial phone to the left of my old notebook is an Ericsson Dialog, which was used by the millions in Sweden from the 1960s until the 1980s. It was also sold with the usual sequence of digits on the dial to other countries like the USA. The Ericsson Dialog can be found very often at Swedish flea markets and costs the equivalent of a few dollars. The devices are very easy to maintain and can be disassembled with a single screwdriver. The assemblies are plugged together. And the whole construction is very robust.

Gray was the predominant color. Then in the 1970s, it became more colorful. Red was nevertheless rather rare. Black, by the way, was also rare.

On my photo you can see that on the dial in Sweden the order of the digits is different.



Sweden: 0123456789
Most countries in the world: 1234567890

But the mechanics of the dial is unchanged. To be able to dial with the Swedish dials without conversion, there is a small PHP program for Asterisk, which is presented here:

Swedish Dial: AGI PHP script for Asterisk converts dialed numbers

After this digression to the Ericsson dialog we would be back to Asterisk, with which really almost everything is possible.

The attached photo shows my completely disassembled red Ericsson Dialog after I polished and cleaned it. The reassembly was a great pleasure.

Restoration of a Swedish rotary phone Ericsson Dialog

[markosjal]

Looks much very like I remember the internals of an Ericsson (made in Mexico model) . As I recall that dial mount holds the circuit board in place. Those bells became kind of a "standard" in Mexico because they were interchangeable with some of the IndeTel bells, although the construction of the two was quite different. I may still have gray shell, handset and dial from a Mexico Ericsson but I know it is far from complete. It makes me want to fix it up now, but as I recall the circuit board had been soaked and was destroyed..

Here are some pics of Ericssons I have had in the past. never had a red one though.

I am pretty sure that Erisccons made all over the world followed the same design.

BTW White upper right phone in multi-phone pic is an IndeTel (Mexico) as mentioned earlier. Some Indetel Models were re-branded as "ITT Own a Phone" for sale in the USA.

[dsk]

One step further.. or??
The 3cx did suddenly not connect to Callcentric, and I struggled a lot without any result, so now my Raspberry Pi is running the Incredible PBX.  I will definitely say that it was a struggle to understand how to set it up, but it looks like it is working now.

It is of-course completely madness having 3 systems working at home, but the magneto phones are connected to my field exchange, most of the rotaries are connected to electro-mechanical PBX (That has been modified with trunk to Callcentric) and of-course a few phones trough the Incredible PBX so the family don't have to use the older systems.  :-)  Still struggeling a litle with my connection to C*net, I'm sure it is solvable.

[markosjal]

It is so funny you mention C*Net I almost forgot about them . IN Early 2000s I had a VoIP business and was a member of an antique phone Yahoo group I believe it was.  I suggested to someone on that Yahoo group that they look at Asterisk to power their VoIP for antique phones and they did and C*Net was born. I was always treated as a "newcomer" despite planting early seeds.  What Is so weird it was so very difficult to get involved with them as a new user and only after many attempts I finally did but then found it to be very unfriendly, suffering from a serious case of "good ole' boy" syndrome laced with racism even in posts and some recordings made available by users. Unless they have changed their ways , best to not bother. As I also recall their installation seemed to have been written by a child and lacked variables in dial strings and instead used long lists of dial strings. Maybe they have updated it by now finally. It is the very definition of a clusterf*ck. Not to mention they needed to change the name long ago.

As for PBX...
Incredible PBX through would be one of my last choices along with 3CX . Ward Mundy (Incredible PBX) is so full of himself and hot air and he offer ZERO consistency in things like modules upgrades etc. In fact it has some of the most ridiculous integrated security that I have ever seen, although effective it is not very friendly. 3CX is a commercial product and they bought out and shut down open source software to replace it all with their proprietary 3CX software. Luckily some of those former devs moved on to other projects based on Asterisk like Issabel PBX . It was a purely selfish commercial move and I think even Ward Mundy sold out one of his projects to 3CX. It seems to me Ward Mundy was hosting some 3CX support stuff for a while.

On a Pi I would suggest RasPBX for a very easy install http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/  Of course if you want Google Voice compatibility there is  script for that install on the dslreports forums. 

[dsk]

I tried Free PBX and got only errors all the time, now it seems like the PBX works OK.   The drawback of all the asterisk versions is that it is so many ways to solve the problems, and we mix of those in the same PBX.  No, I do not use the C*NET  pretty much. The phones are interesting as a hobby, and to use them are more natural on the regular telephone network to family and friends that usually have no interest of C*NET or other networks that are for everybody. 
It would actually be more interesting to be able to receive calls from facebook/messenger if that was possible, and even better if I could call trough messenger.

[countryman]

The coolest thing on earth would be a good working voice recognition as a fake manual office, to connect antique manual phones.
It works well on smart phones of course, but even there comes to its limits when headsets are used instead of the built-in microphone. Any antique mic, no chance :-(
I had a device called "vocally" for testing, it was crap.

[dsk]

I can share that dream, and we should of course have it working in multiple languages too.
Granny worked at the exchange and of course the follow me service was implemented.  A farmer called for the vet. and he was told the he is at that farm just now, I'll put you trough... etc. etc. 

[markosjal]

I tried Free PBX and got only errors all the time, now it seems like the PBX works OK.  The drawback of all the asterisk versions is that it is so many ways to solve the problems, and we mix of those in the same PBX.  No, I do not use the C*NET  pretty much. The phones are interesting as a hobby, and to use them are more natural on the regular telephone network to family and friends that usually have no interest of C*NET or other networks that are for everybody. 
It would actually be more interesting to be able to receive calls from facebook/messenger if that was possible, and even better if I could call trough messenger.

Asterisk can work to answer calls on Bluetooth so if you run it on whatever app whether whatsapp of facebook messenger on android phone or tablet and  can answer a call with a Bluetooth device you can then answer the call . The problem however is MAKING calls. As I just googled I found this https://nerdvittles.com/the-perfect-pair-facebook-hooks-up-with-incredible-pbx/ for incredible PBX

[markosjal]

The coolest thing on earth would be a good working voice recognition as a fake manual office, to connect antique manual phones.
It works well on smart phones of course, but even there comes to its limits when headsets are used instead of the built-in microphone. Any antique mic, no chance :-(
I had a device called "vocally" for testing, it was crap.

I know I hit a speech recognition IVR recently on a WE 500 and it underst0od nothing of what I was saying. This idea might work though with one of the electronic Carbon Mic replacements like  maybe that is what this is? I know there is another thread here about them but can not find it http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=23321.msg240087#msg240087
Of course if the capacitors in the phone are old that might be an issue too. I do not think the coils wear out.


There is a speech recognition module for asterisk here https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Speech+Recognition+API

It might not be too hard to get that module to recognize Asterisk phone book entries, Do dial an access number (or auto dial when phone goes off-hook) and say "Call John Smith" and find john smith in phonebook. With custom dial strings you might even be able to connect these to things like Facebook Messenger

[markosjal]

I can share that dream, and we should of course have it working in multiple languages too.
Granny worked at the exchange and of course the follow me service was implemented.  A farmer called for the vet. and he was told the he is at that farm just now, I'll put you trough... etc. etc. 

Multiple languages is a do-able in most modules of asterisk Some GUIs like FreePBX or Isabell might make some things easier. Isabell was based on Elastix and at one time I was quite proficient at managing Multi-lingual call flows in Elastix. In Vanilla asterisk you can also use contexts.
 

[dsk]

Here it was lots of creative ideas, thank you.  The description was complicated with a lot of focus on security. I am not sure that I want to take the risk of doing that, at least I have to use more time and learn more.
Regarding safety, maybe I should give FreePBX another try???

[markosjal]

I would highly recommend you give freePBX another try . If Google voice is not s priority the RaspPBX distro should be very easy but will not give you the newest version of asterisk as that project seems a little old at this point, so if you are brave (recommended)  you can use this install https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30661088-PBX-FreePBX-for-the-Raspberry-Pi that in my opinion is the best choice. Also if you need help and have a windows or Mac computer on the same network I can help you remotely.

One of the things I do not like about IncrediblePBX is the developers idea of security. I do not think much of that particular developer behind it either. He is  very good at tooting his own horn and not much more. I am sure by now you have seen his convoluted idea of "security", that is if he has not changed it much. Also keep in mind he does control all his own forums and blog comments and truly when there is a comment that questions something like is security model, he deletes those comments and sometimes even bans that user. HE controls it all, even the comments you see or do not see.


On the other hand There are many FreePBX systems on the Internet and they do not need all of that because they are built more securely with  security always in mind when code is written..

[dsk]

Thank you for all this relevant info, I will definitely try Free PBX once more.   By the way, dropped over this RUSSIAN! version : https://www.mikopbx.com/  Looks interesting, but cyrrilic is not understandable  
Security??

If I get problems I may contact you.