[Asterisk-Users] Analog Phones with Status Light Indicators

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 06:17, Jeremy Lowery wrote:
> I am currently a new asterisk user and new to telephony in general. I 
> have been looking around to implement a solution with asterisk that has 
> many of the nice features of a proprietary PBX for a small office. The 
> features that I am looking for that I haven't been able to find any 
> information on are:
> 
> - status light indicators for which incoming line in ringing
> - status light indicators for which lines are currently in use
> 
> Basically any information on phones (analog preferred or hard VoIP)  
> which have status light indicator buttons that can be made to function 
> with asterisk.
> 
> Is this possible, and has anyone set up a phone system with these 
> features using asterisk? If so, what phones were used and what kind of 
> special configuration is required?

You are looking for line occurences/apperances.

Your problem is that in the analog world, to get those line apperances
you have to wire every line to every phone. Not very efficient, nor
practical, nor does it scale to a large number of phone lines. Plus on
some circuits, lines are not relavent, such as a PRI. 

Under asterisk, you are encouraged to use extensions. Extensions are
flexible and scaleable. Your 3 line phone system now can scale up to 2
or 3 PRI without making major changes to user behavior. You will not
find a phone system with a T1 worth of indicator lights in a price range
for every persons desk, You wouldn't want a phone with enough
lights/buttons to access 3 T1s worth of phone lines.

So before you hamstring your small office into having unnecessary
growing pains as it expands at some time down the road, think about the
nicer, larger PBX solutions. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>