[Asterisk-Users] GSM phones, bluetooth and general happiness

[Jay Milk]

When I installed my first home-PBX three years ago, I was looking at
"cellsockets" -- devices which will accept certain cellular phones and
provide an RJ11 jack, generating the ring-voltage and recognizing DTMF,
which in turn makes your cell-phone look like a CO line.  Pretty cool
stuff, in theory, but it just didn't seem to be worth the cost,
especially since it locks you to a particular cell-phone.

Since then, I've moved to Asterisk.  I looked at at cell-sockets again
recently, but they haven't really gotten any cheaper... And on top of
that, I'd now require a precious FXO interface for *.

I looked at some developer documentation for my particular phone (S/E
T610) while connecting it to my PC via Bluetooth.  For those who are
unaware, all GSM phones have a built-in set of AT modem commands.  Not
surprisingly, I was able to place calls as well as receive
ring-indicators, caller-id information and call-progress information via
the virtual serial port that the phone provides over bluetooth.  But
what's more, I was also able to utilize my PC as a handsfree
speakerphone -- and all this over bluetooth.

As I see it, all the pieces are available -- we got full phone control,
some form of digital audio going back and forth, call-progress
reporting.  I know there's at least one bluetooth stack for linux, so
*technically* we're "there", no?

I foresee a chan_blue which allow Asterisk to utilize a bluetooth/GSM
cellular phone as a CO line, connecting by nothing more than a $5
bluetooth dongle and 5ft of air.

Who's up for the challenge?  If there's enough interest in the
community, I'll be the first to add a bounty on this -- it would be
worth at least $100 to me to have this functionality.