More phone craziness – ATCOM IP01 Asterisk PABX
Nov1
A few months ago I installed a digital Pabx here at Wastebusters. It was an old Toshiba laptop running the opensource Asterisk/Trixbox CE mix. Since then it has mostly worked well apart from some hiccups at the beginning, and some occasional loss of internet connection which takes down the phones.
From the beginning it is has been obvious that relying on an old laptop has its disadvantages, mainly as if the power goes out it does not boot up automatically. It also relies on the laptop hardware and hard drive, which when (not if) it fails is fairly catastrophic. A server grade bit of gear with a UPS would be nicer.
The world of computers is ever changing and this year it looks like the age of the embedded system on cheap, but powerful, processors is here. Below is a ATCOM IP01, it is effectively a mini computer (from Nicegear) running a 400mhz Blackfin processor which as it turns out is ample to run a linux/asterisk stack ~ cost $295nzd. What does this mean? You can now replace a cabinet sized PABX with a low power box the size of a calculator. No surprise I guess when you look at an advanced mobile phone.
ATCOM IP01 Asterisk Applicance
The experience setting it up was mostly good, the gui is ok (some contrasting colours separating feature groups would be good) and my experience with Asterisk generally came in handy.
So now the little guy is churning away handling 10 extensions, an auto attendant, voicemail to email and all the goodness. It isnot over though – unfortunately we have a very sporadic call dropping issue which I am hoping is almost fixed.
The next mission, depending on how our internet connection reliability goes, is to add a normal phone line to the IP01 so if the net is down it has a fall over. The other option would be to add a GSM trunk so the fallover was a cellphone ~ I need to start looking for a economic SIP->GSM widget that could plugin as a trunk. Hmmm….
Clients
