[NMLUG] Fun with Asterisk

[andres at paglayan.com (Andres Paglayan)]

Yep, looks like Asterisk is the way to go for anything phone related.
there are couple of other projects, but greener.

At the office we already have a computer based system for 24 trunks on a 
T1 and 64 extensions we purchased for $10k from Praxton four years ago, 
way before Asterisk was a viable solution. So we are looking to change 
it, but may be next year.

I installed * for another, smaller medical practice, where they run it 
with the following hardware,
a digium TDM22B  ~$360  (2 fxo, 2 fxs -the two fxs are for the fax 
machines-) the fxo for the two pots lines.
a white box server   ~$250 (amd 2ghz, 512 ram, headless Debian, custom 
compilation of Asterisk and AMPortal)
a voip phone ~$130 Polycom 301 (for the front desk, so it has more 
features at a button touch)
a 2 port ATA ~$80 Sipura 2001 (for the providers, the ATA interfaces the 
voip line from the server to a regular, analog phone)

I use voipsupply.com for all related products.

Total 2 lines, 5 extensions,

And you can add as many extensions over voip as you want without adding 
hardware if you use a soft phone. i.e. using a wi-fi enable pda gives 
you the same functionality as a wireless phone, but with a big plus, you 
can log in your phone system and register the location of your extension 
from any place in the world having a hot spot. (sweet)

Total hard, $820 for an __extremely flexible__ and growable SOHO phone 
system. (just ask, and the system can do it)
(I also installed AMPortal, which gives you a web interface to configure 
extensions without knowing the asterisk .conf files)

With little programming you can have your system querying the patient 
appointments database and making automatic reminder calls.

The toys that are coming up to play with it are becoming so fun,

i.e. ragi, which is a ruby library for handling the asterisk api, but in 
a very easy way
so easy that you can make your phone (system, server?) play Simon with 
just few lines of code, and of course integrate it with any other web 
application.
http://www.snapvine.com/code/simoncode

Botom line is:
Any $50 used PIII can handle Asterisk working with few extensions, 
(ebay.com compaq deskpro)
you can buy alternative hardware for $20 to interface with the phone 
line, query ebay.com for "asterisk x100p".
Plus add a voip provider for 2cts the minute everywere, like teliax.com
and you get a superb phone system.