Bend in the Weather

Asterisk needs to come with a warning.

Releasing software like this to the wild is bound to just create havoc!

It's quite irresponsible of Digium to just give this software away, and not at least have some form of warning before people download it.

Let me explain...

1. Proprietary PABX/PBX makers and Telcos will loose millions of dollars with it
2. People can finally do what they like with their phones
3. For a newbie the configuration files can be daunting
4. Once bitten with the Asterisk bug, you are always tweaking and adding features.
5. Asterisk Administrators are likely to find themselves shunned in public when they mumble about trunks, extensions and dialplans.

Having said that, I totally love it!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, that we purchased some Snom phones, a Linksys SPA-3102 connected to some Panasonic cordless phones as well as a fax/modem (that runs Hylafax).

We've now have all extensions working, Voicemail, Conference Rooms, group pickup, call parking and Music on Hold taken care of.
I've even set it up that when our DID numbers are called that all the phones ring until someone picks it up.
(A very big thanks to Paul Dwerryhouse for being patient over many hours and answering my silly questions!)

I'm looking at adding iaxmodem to my Hylafax setup so we can utilise T.38 faxing, and fallback to PSTN when only required.
We receive more faxes then ever send, so it's not a real big issue.

Next, I wonder if I can integrate Nagios into Asterisk so when I am remote I can issue commands by dialling into the Asterisk PBX. I've already got 2-way SMS message alerting working on Nagios (Which I promise I'll post up one day shortly) using a range of OSS tools. I would however like a little more control on just what I can do remotely from time to time. (Ever notice Nagios only alerts when you are away from a computer!? )

Now I'm a self-confessed Asterisk-Addict™ (aka AA),

I'd love to hear some of the other neat things people are doing. I think something using ZoneMinder (front door camera, rings IP video phone to indicate someone is there) would be pretty cool.

So post your funky ways you're using Asterisk, I'm all ears!