[Asterisk-Dev] Pulling a call out of voicemail, and monitoring voicemail entry

[Rich Adamson]

> I am new to the list, and fairly new (1 week) with Asterisk, so please
> excuse me if I am stating something stupid :-)
> 
> I'm using Asterisk as a home PBX with a Sipura SPA-3000 adapter for my
> PSTN and analog phones.
> 
> I had an idea that I posted on the voxilla.com forum, basically I want to
> use Asterisk's voicemail system instead of our answering machine, but I
> have an issue with WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) that I need to resolve
> before I can do it:
> 
> When our old-fashioned answering machine takes a call you can hear the
> caller in the other end and if you pick up the handset, the answering
> machine stops.
> 
> This has 2 purposes:
> 
> 1) If you are running around to find the cordless phone it gives you some
> extra time after the answering machine kicks in.
> 
> 2) You can hear who is calling and if it's someone important you can pick
> it up even if you weren't bothered otherwise.

There are probably multiple ways to integrate it, but not in the same
way that you currently use the answering machine for screening calls.

My implementation (which still yields unacceptable results during the 
wife test) puts the spa-3000 in the pstn line, allowing incoming pstn 
calls to pass through the spa and ring the analog phones.

Behind the spa, asterisk has an analog interface (tdm fxo) that "sees"
incoming rings just like any other analog phone, including the old
answering machine. She can still screen calls via the answering machine.

The spa's ethernet interface has been configured for Line1 to register
with *, as well as the pstn interface to register. Asterisk now has
full access to both in-house phones (via Line1) and the pstn (via 
the pstn interface).

The spa dialplan has been heavily modified. Calls originating from
the house phones default to dialing out through the pstn line. If
an outbound call is preceded by a "8", the call is directed to
asterisk. 911, etc, default to the pstn line. The dialplan includes
and entry for the 3xxx extensions assigned to asterisk, therefore
any phone in the house can be used to dial asterisk extensions,
pstn calls, or any facility accessible via asterisk.

The objective was to place all the house phones behind asterisk in
such a way as to allow full access to everything, but allow the 
untrained user (including my wife and visitors) to dial as normal 
and not have to remember any special dial codes.

If an incoming call arrives in asterisk from an ITSP, asterisk has
been configured to ring the house phones with a distinctive ring
indicating a voip call.

Its working very well and is very acceptable to my wife with the
exception of echo on most/all pstn calls. The spa-3000 still has an
issue with echo cancellation (even with the latest firmware), however
the release notes suggest sipura is aware of it and working towards
a resolution. Others have complained about the echo as well; its
rather disturbing to non-technical users.

I had to modify the spa 'pstn answer delay' parameter to be longer
then what the answering machine requires, otherwise the spa will
answer all incoming calls after 16 seconds not allowing the old
answering machine to do anything. If the spa is allowed to answer
the call, the pstn caller hears another dialtone, which most have
no clue what that is for.