Can Asterisk do this? (manage home lines) please help

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

I apologize if this is covered somewhere. I searched and couldn’t find anything specific.

I have a friend who is going through a rough time and is receiving a lot of phone harassment.

Anyway here is what I would like to do, and wonder if Asterisk can do it.

Would it be possible to put an Asterisk box on the main phone line coming from the phone company (POTS line). Then drive the analog lines that go through the house to all the standard analog phone off another port/card on the Asterisk box.

So basically have the POTS line coming into the Asterisk box, and the pair of lines that go throughout the house goes to an output on the Asterisk box.

What I would like to do is have the Asterisk box handle calls coming into the house and decide what to do.

So basically if a call comes from a known callers number (basically a list of known “good” caller) it allows it to ring through to the regular phones in the house. If it is an unknown number it goes right to voice mail. It could handle the voicemail on the Asterisk box or just do nothing as he has voice mail through the phone company. Would be nice if it logged date and time for all incoming calls too.

The important thing is that private, unknown, or blocked numbers not ring the regular analog lines and either silently send it to voicemail, or silently do nothing (not ring the in house analog phones). Any number that is not in a known list would go to voicemail, and he could just add to that “allowed” list when new numbers arise he wants to ring through.

And ideally dialing out from the regular phones would work as it does now.

Are there any options to setup something like this?

The only other thing of note about his houses wiring. Every phone line in the house comes to a central spot. They are all tied together currently. The person who wired the house used CAT5 for the phone lines. I would still like to use the old analog phones, but do have the ability to have each analog phone coming to the Asterisk server on its own pair of wires.

The easiest solution for my friend is to change the phone number and make the line private, but he doesn’t want to do that as he has too many contacts that use the current number. Plus the new number would get back to the people harassing him anyway.

He is receiving calls all the time from a certain party at all hours of the nite, mainly from pay phones, and private lines.

2

in a word, yes. Asterisk can do this for you.

depending on how much you want to spend, and where you are, you could pickup a X100P clone, but preferably spend a bit more on a Digium TDM400P card, to connect your phone line in (TDM01B), and optionally the analogue phones (order a TDM21B). the other (cheaper) option for analogue phones is something like a LinkSys PAP2 and the TDM01B.

if you want to have a go at setting up the config files yourself it wouldn’t be to hard, but i have a feeling that Nerd Vittles nerdvittles.com has an appropriate project that you can bolt onto Asterisk@Home (which is an easy way to get started with Asterisk)

3

Ideally I would like to keep the additional hardware to around $200 or so. My friend doesn’t have a lot of money to spend. This would be for standard analog phone systems here in the United states.

I am a complete asterisk newbie, so is this the configuration of card you are talking about?

telephonyware.com/telephonyware/tw00068.html

Looks like it has one FXS port (for the phones?) and one FXO port (for the incoming phone line?).

I take it one is for the incoming analog line and the other for the line that drives all the standard analog phone.

So basically with this card I could set up Asterisk to check incoming calls and decide if to ring the house phones or to quietly pass them to voice mail or do nothing?

And would the internal phone be able to be picked off the hook and hear a dial tone like normal and just dial an outgoing call?

I dont want to force him to get a VOIP provider, I would like to do this all with the in house wiring, regular analog phone, and current analog phone provider.

Thanks for your help.

4

Also instead of the TDM11B card I mentioned could I go this cheaper route?

store.asteriskmall.com/lisp1.html

This Sipura 3000 seems to be similar in function for less than $100.

If I am correct that either can function for what I need, is there a benefit one way or the other to either model.

Obviously the TDM11B has two more slots for adding more adapters, but for my friends situation I don’t think I would need future expansion.

5

belboz,

I bought a SPA-3000 hen I started experimenting Asterisk. I would not suggest you to use this device because of one thing, echo. I was experimenting lots of echo and setting is very hard. TDM card from Asterisk re for sure a better investissement.

Also, it’s easier to get support for those TDM card because lo’s of people are using them and the wiki is full of information.

That’s why I would difinitely suggest you to order a TDM11B. One FXS and one FXO.

6

Dimitri,

I am confused about the echo problem you mention. Was this an issue with the SPA-3000 while making VOIP calls, or was this under the conditions I discussed above for my friends proposed setup?

I don’t understand Asterisk by any means, but every time I think of echo I think of VOIP, speaker phones, etc.

So for an analog solution like I am talking about where the asterisk box is only routing incoming POTS calls to the analog phones in the house, is echo going to be a problem? Along those lines the outgoing calls will be routed from the analog lines through the main POTS line. No VOIP carriers for long distance, etc. Everything through the POTS line.

Besides being cheaper for my friend, the only other thing I like about the SPA-3000 is that if power fails his regular lines just work. Also 911 would work under a power fail condition.

With the Digium card, if I understand things correctly, if power fails the home phones would be dead. Someone would have to basically unplug the FXO and FXS lines from the card and connect them together. Or have a phone directly connected to the FXO line also, and that one phone would bypass the Asterisk system.

Thanks again for the help on this. I am just starting to grasp this stuff, so I apologize for my ignorance on this stuff in general.

Although I am really interested in setting one of these up for myself also after doing it for my friend.

[quote=“Dimitripietro”]belboz,

I bought a SPA-3000 hen I started experimenting Asterisk. I would not suggest you to use this device because of one thing, echo. I was experimenting lots of echo and setting is very hard. TDM card from Asterisk re for sure a better investissement.

Also, it’s easier to get support for those TDM card because lo’s of people are using them and the wiki is full of information.

That’s why I would difinitely suggest you to order a TDM11B. One FXS and one FXO.[/quote]