Your PC should be fine for home use.
I'm not real fond of most of the ATA's I've seen so far. The Sangoma
A200 card w/echo cancel is the only thing that has passed the spouse
test so far ... but it is EXPENSIVE. And I might add it is not perfect
either but a whole lot better than the others.
This is very subjective but if you want to go with an ATA I have found
the Grandstream units appear to have better echo cancellation - double
the echo tail in SW - (at least on my line) than the Linksys but the
linksys have better features. The features only I care about but the
echo my wife cares about every time she picks up the phone.
X10. Do you have a Firecracker interface (CM-17A)? This is a
non-programmable x10 interface for a serial port. Non-programmable means
it is a)cheap, b)not restricted by it's hardware as to combinations you
can use. Just make your software robust enough to do what _you_ want.
There is a software application called BottleRocket which controls it
from unix/linux. Tie some scripts to AGI and presto - home control from
your phone.
dbc.
Rob Russell wrote:
Okay, I've been lurking here for a few months and I think I finally
understand what I need to get Asterisk up and running for my home
phone setup. This is a sanity check before I commit to any new
hardware or services.
What I've got so far:
Aging AMD Athlon 1200MHz desktop running OpenSuse 10.1 that's always
on and runs some other services for me. D-Link DI-524 wireless router
and an SMC Barracade router. Reliable DSL service through Teksavvy.
Home phone from Bell. Two cordless phones that I paid too much for to
replace already. Some cheap X10 lighting control stuff I've been using
for years, including an RS232 adapter. I'm in Windsor, Ontario.
What I want to do in the short term:
Get enhanced phone service & long distance to Michigan, Toronto,
Chicago & California for next to nothing. Integrate some simple X10
stuff. Eventually set up call routing from my cel phone to get the
same stuff I can get from home.
How I think I'm going to do this:
As far as I can tell the cheapest way to get started is with an ATA
and a DID (adding a second DID for the cel phone to call later).
For the ATA I'm looking at ordering the Linksys PAP2-NA or PAP2T-NA
online (they're the same price and I can't tell the difference). I see
some Grandstream units that are cheaper but I get a better feeling
about the Linksys one from bits I've read on this list. Any technical
reasons to choose one or the other? Echo? Ease of use?
For a DID I want a Windsor phone number, so I've found LES.net that
looks okay. Unlimitel gets a lot of praise here but doesn't have
Windsor DIDs as far as I see (519 but not Windsor). In order to route
calls to and from my cel, I think I'll need a second DID and I'll be
paying twice for my minutes (once for each DID while a call is
active). I want to order one DID to start with then get another if
things work okay. I don't understand exactly how the billing rates
work for a DID, I see a price per minute and I see long distance
rates. Is the long distance rate just based on where the call
terminates without regard to where the DID is assigned? If so what's
the price per minute? Is that in addition to the long distance rate?
It must be obvious once you've worked in this stuff, but I'm still too
new to this stuff.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this and thanks to all for
supporting this great open source project.
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