[Asterisk-Users] *** Asterisk Sunday News: Conferences on the phone and IRL - "in real life"

Olle E. Johansson oej at edvina.net
Sun May 23 05:22:49 MST 2004


Here in Sweden, it's supposed to be springtime. A wonderful time of the year,
with sunny skies and wonderful weather. Almost summer. Today, it's not.
It's winter all over again with rain and only 3 degrees celsius outside.
Better to stay inside and write a weekly Asterisk newsletter :-)

This week's topics:
-------------------
* Looking beyond Asterisk 1.0/1.1 - what's up?
* Asterisk on SlashDot
* Asterisk on the O'Reilly Open Source Convention
* Writing community documentation - asteriskdocs.org
* Application of the week: The MeetMe conference system
* Alternatives to the standard MeetMe

*** Looking beyond Asterisk 1.0/1.1 - what's up?
-------------------------------------------------
   At Astricon in September we'll arrange a developer's meeting. This is
the first time we gather all Asterisk programmers and documentation
writers into a meeting that will be held a the third day of Astricon.
The idea is to be able to discuss future architectures and major
additions. The Digium team, with Mark Spencer in the lead, will be
an active part of othis meeting.

There are several ways to set up a meeting like this, from
totally uncontrolled chaos to organized semi-controlled chaos.
We're aiming for the latter. Read more on how you can contribute:
- http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2004-May/046858.html
- http://www.astricon.net

*** Asterisk on SlashDot
------------------------
   Asterisk was mentioned on SlashDot this week, together with e164.org,
an ENUM-like registry created by very active Asterisk contributors.
In fact, we've added an e164.org-specific app to Asterisk in cvs head.
Read more:
- http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/22/1840220
- http://www.e164.org
- http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=ENUM

*** Asterisk on the O'Reilly Open Source Convention
---------------------------------------------------
   John Todd, an active member of the Asterisk community, is talking about
Asterisk on the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon,
in July:
   "This talk details how to insert Asterisk into your organization in ways
   that that won't cost any significant money, yet will impress senior
   management with only a few clever tricks to the end goal of your receiving
   funding for a full-blown beta test. The savings that can be realized from
   using Asterisk are truly astounding, and the features available at no cost
   are one of the best examples of tangible cost savings
   that open source can provide."

* http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2004/view/e_sess/5016

*** Writing community documentation - asteriskdocs.org
------------------------------------------------------
   Maybe we should produce a couple of Asterisk OpenOffice Impress
presentations that we all can use on local Open Source community
gatherings? I'll hand that idea over to the Asterisk Docs project.
On the topic of docs, they have restarted and are having regular MeetMe
phone conferences. They need your help, we need more people writing
documentation, making sure we're not adding functions without
proper documentation, explaining to new users how great
Asterisk really is behind all the code and cryptic commands.

The Asterisk Docs project is awarded my "Asterisk project of the week"
award. They have the worst web site, but is a great project to join.
(Yes, I've seen the new web layout suggestions, they're great :-)

- http://www.asteriskdocs.org
- Mailing list and IRC channel is available

*** Application of the week: The MeetMe conference system
---------------------------------------------------------
   Have you discovered the not-so-simple-anymore "Simple Meetme Conference
Bridge" application? It's a killer app in Asterisk. With this app,
you get a lot of functionality:

- Multiuser conferencing over multiple channels - VoIP and PSTN
- Announcements: One talker, multiple listeners
- Administration - kicking users, muting and locking conferences
- Background music while waiting for other participants
- Statically configured conferences with pin code auth for entry
- Dynamic conferences, created on demand
   (the conference number is told at first user entry)

In CVS head, there's been a number of additions to MeetMe lately,
additions that make MeetMe much more than a "simple" conference bridge.

The dial plan applications for the  MeetMe system in CVS head are
- MeetMe - enter a conference (in some cases creates a dynamic conference)
- MeetMeAdmin - kick users, lock conferences, mute conferences
- MeetMeCount - count number of participants for a conference

There's also a new family of CLI commands for managing MeetMe:
- Meetme			List conferences
- MeetMe kick <confno> <user>	Kick a user out of a conference
- MeetMe kick <confno> all	Kick all users
- MeetMe list <confno> 		List participants in a conference
- MeetMe lock <confno> 		Lock a conference - no more users
- MeetMe unlock <confno> 	Unlock a conference
- MeetMe mute <confno> 		Mute a conference
- MeetMe unmute <confno>	Unmute a conference

Some additional notes on Meetme conferences
- The conference bridge runs Ulaw codec by default
   If you let people connect with GSM or other codecs,
   Asterisk will use CPU power to convert audio between codecs
- The variable MEETMESECS contains the amount of seconds
   user was in conference
- The Meetme app reads meetme.conf for each static conference joined
   I.e. there's no need to reload the config for each change
- Authenticate with the authenticate() app if you want a user basaed
   auth for a meetme conference
- You can limit the number of participants by using meetmecount()
   and variables in the dial plan
- To be able to run MeetMe, your Asterisk server needs a Zaptel
   timer. This is provided from Digium cards or through various
   drivers.
   See http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20timer

*** Alternatives to the standard MeetMe
---------------------------------------
A variant of MeetMe with a web based control UI is MeetMe2
   "The goals of this application is to control your audience/users in the
   conference room. That will allow you to have a visual presentation and
   to control the conferences over the net.
   A lot of changes has be made to app_meetme to keep some conferences
   informations into a DB  and to check through if some properties has been
   changed."
- http://www.areski.net/asterisk-meetme/about.php?s=0

Another variant is app_conference, that according to the author,
can handle more simultaneous users:
   "If people are looking for a higher-capacity conferencing application,
   take a look at app_conference, in the iaxclient (on sourceforge) CVS.
   I haven't really benchmarked meetme, but I _think_ that
   app_conference might be able to beat it.  Certainly in it's designed
   application it will (iax clients which use VAD on the client side)."
- http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/iaxclient/app_conference/


*** Useful Asterisk web links:
------------------------------
* Asterisk: http://www.asterisk.org
* Asterisk mailing lists: http://lists.digium.com
   (users, dev, biz and cvs mailing list)
* Asterisk bug tracker: http://bugs.digium.com
* Asterisk IRC channel: #asterisk on irc.freenode.net
* Digium: http://www.digium.com
* Wiki: http://www.voip-info.org
* Voip Search: http://search.voip-forum.com
* Astricon: http://www.astricon.net

That was all for this week. I hope that the spring will try again up here
in the Nordics. If not, you'll find me on the IRC while hacking. Otherwise,
I'll be out in the garden with a wireless Asterisk phone connected to my
small Asterisk Linux server running silently on compact flash...
More on that topic another week.

And if you have topics for me to include in Asterisk Sunday News, mail
me off list :-)

Have a nice Asterisk week!
/Olle



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