This week Jonathan Bennett and David Ruggles sit down with Joshua Colp to talk about Asterisk! That’s the Open Source phone system software you already interact with without realizing it. It started as a side project to run the phones for Linux Support Services, and it turned out working on phone systems was more fun than supporting Linux. The project grew, and in the years since has landed at Sangoma, where Joshua holds the title of Asterisk Project Lead.
Asterisk is used in call centers, business phone systems, and telecom appliances around the world. But how does it handle faxes, WebRTC, and stopping spam calls? Just kidding on that last one, still an unsolved problem.
– https://github.com/jcolp
– https://colp.dev
– https://www.asterisk.org/
– https://docs.asterisk.org/
– https://community.asterisk.org/
– https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLighc-2vlRgTTbc54EpDsbb3xIoQPPRLQ
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right in the Hackaday Discord? Have someone you’d like use to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us! Next week we’re chatting with Gina Häußge about Octoprint.
Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.
“…and it turned out working on phone systems was more fun than supporting Linux. ”
Blasphemy.
” But how does it handle faxes, WebRTC, and stopping spam calls? Just kidding on that last one, still an unsolved problem.”
The latter involves sending high voltages through the phone lines to the sources.
VoIP compatible method: waste the telemarketer’s time. Can be fully automated with Asterisk, which comes (or came, didn’t check) with a sample script for that purpose.
Lenny ftw
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asterisk+lenny For The Win
Thanks
VoIP PC FXS/FXO cards used to be affordable – then came Sangoma.
Actually I have seen tons of that stuff on the used market going for chump change. The thing is in todays age, who wants to mess with copper anymore? Much easier to just interface your ip switch with an ip provider.
reg said: “The thing is in todays age, who wants to mess with copper anymore? Much easier to just interface your ip switch with an ip provider.”
Many homes and offices have existing wired telephones that merge at a single place like a closet or cabinet punch-down block. That’s where you need the FXS cards to interface the phones with a new VoIP PBX. Replacing a four or eight channel FXS card with for or eight seperate ATA boxes is a nightmare. Replacing four or eight analog phones with four or eight IP phones (and their existing wiring) is also a problem. Before Sangoma, brand new cheap multi-channel FXS/FXO cards (FXS in particular) from China used to be prolific. Not any more it seems.
Freeswitch!
Surfing through hackaday while waiting on a freeswitch build to do a high-five!