InterhackerspacePBX

Interhackerspace PBX Project

The Interhackerspace PBX starts here.

Our Goal: Every hackerspace in the WORLD reachable via Voice-Over-IP network

Background

Rob (Sideshow) was in hanging out at Noisebridge in SF in December 2014 and saw the notice above posted there, sent me a picture and I got in contact with the Noisebridge folk, and now we're getting all excited. This is fun. Mouse (talk) 11:00, 5 December 2014 (UTC).

This project kinda died, but I've revived it in 2017 and will aim to have a working PBX (with IAX2 trunk to my personal PBX) by the end of May 2017. Alexmann (talk) 03:27, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Hardware

2 x Emergency Roadside Telephones from Michael E. These devices have no number pad, but we should be able to have them auto-dial numbers by playing DTMF when the receiver is lifted. Matt Lloyd is also looking at wiring in some number selectors so different dial-on-lift numbers could be selected. See here for details
1 x BT Payphone offered by Phil Parry. This would presumably live in the studio, attached to one of the supporting columns See here for details
3 x Cisco 7940G phones
Cisco 3750-24PS Cisco PoE Switch
FXO adapter card (don't yet have)
Raspberry Pi

Architecture

The Primary software behind the PBX is the FreePBX distro of Asterisk, a free open source PBX. To hook up analog devices like the payphone and ERT's, we'd need an FXO adapter card somewhere, so Asterisk would probably have to run on some sort of always-on PC with a PCI slot (since multi-port FXO cards tend to be PCI). An alternative to this might be to use an RPi with USB soundcard to convert analog signals into SIP calls which could connect to the Asterisk instance. This Pi idea is being used for the payphone conversion, with some SIP business phones and a PoE switch being donated by Alex.

Asterisk can connect calls between different devices at the space (extensions), and make outgoing calls to external destinations over the Internet by using some prefix for "outside line", e.g. dial 9 for external numbers.

Asterisk can also handle incoming calls from other spaces (e.g. Noisebridge or general SIP calls over the net), either directing them to the payphone, voicemail or an IVR system which we can have a lot of fun making very silly. An IVR would be cool if someone funny wants to write a script, external calls will likely default to the payphone unless an extension is specified. Alternatively, all phones could ring until one is answered.

Code

https://github.com/NottingHack/PBX

InterhackerspacePBX

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