Hello!
I’m looking for a push to talk solution for a school. They’ve requested PTT handsets for their playground attendants so they don’t have to dial a number. I can find 802.11b SIP handsets all day long but I can’t find one that will do PTT. Any suggestions?
Thanks for your help!
Tom
does something like a cordless phone connected to an ATA with a hot phone (bat-phone) dialplan that rings a sip phone with an autoanswer ALERT_INFO setup do the trick? It would only be one way push to talk intiated by the cordless? (or you could do similar with a speeddial on the cordless if you wanted it to be able to act like a regular phone also).
p
may sound dumb, but what about standard GMRS or FRS handheld radios all set to use the same channel?
would be cheap and very easy…
They’re currently using FRS radios and the coverage is crap. They’d like something they can tie into the phone system which is easy enough. I can light up the playgrounds with 802.11g and give them SIP phones to carry around. I told them the PTT thing might be impossible at this time but I want to make damn sure before I pick a phone. This is a public bid so I’m sure that someone will come in with a solution that does PTT but they’re going to be very expensive compared to what I give them with Asterisk.
I was actually suprised that they weren’t using GMRS. GMRS makes more sense to me but I’m an amateur radio operator, I know a bit more about radio than the school admins do. 
Tom
wow, that’s suprising - the el-cheapo FRS radios i picked up for $10 have about a half-mile effective range (point to point, over level ground)…
i know that some people have gotten the nokia E60 (supports PTT) talking to asterisk, but i’m not sure that’s a route you’d want to take (mucho $$$).
i haven’t seen any other wifi-based phones that have any fancy features, and p_lindheimer’s idea is actually a GREAT idea…it would be a one-touch option, as soon as they open the phone connection the extension is dialed.
cheap too, as you can get 5.8GHz phones for practically nothing, and if they get lost or broken, replacements are easy to come by…
another thought. Could you do something with the Aastra 480CT phones that have the cordless unit. I’m not familiar with the cordless capabilities but ?
p
From what I remember the Aastras are tied to a base unit and I have no place to put the base units to make that work.
I just emailed Zultys to ask about the WIP2. I’ve found a bunch of places on the net that say the WIP2 supports push to talk but a few of them say it’s only supported with their back end IP-PBX. Honestly, how hard would it be to build a dialplan that would do push to talk in Asterisk?
Tom
These here might do it but im sure the price would be the killer
I could kiss you, rusty! Those things are awesome! Thank you!
Tom
Well you beter wait till you see the price. I priced some about a year ago dont remeber how much it was but do remember they were rather steep
In the grand scheme of things the price is irrelevant when you consider that we’re probably going up against Mitel (expensive) and Cisco (damn expensive).
Tom
Well I hope they work for you then. If you do get some please post on how well they work