[Asterisk-Users] Pre-install questions

[Mike Myers]

Hi.  I am considering building an asterisk system for
home use, but I am having some trouble understanding a
few things after reading the wiki and the various
mailing lists.  Let me apologize in advance if I have
missed something...

1) What are the hardware needs to run asterisk
reliably?  It appears from the various docs that you
don't need much CPU to run asterisk.  Assuming I pick
a hardware platform with good linux driver support,
how much memory do I need?  Would an old 700 Mhz P3 be
adequate?  

I have seen examples for much more complicated
configurations, but they don't give me much guidance
about memory needed and CPU needed for a home
installation.  

2) Is it possible to take audio line in from a sound
card and have the audio piped into a meetme
conference?  I see from the perl script on the paging
and intercom wiki page that it appears you can take
audio out (fed to a paging system in this context) and
patch it into meetme conference.  

Can I do the same thing except with audio in?  There
are two applications for this for me.  One I use with
my existing nortel venture phone system  - I take
audio from a PC running replay radio (a PC internet
radio recoding system) and patch it into the venture's
EFA to make background music available to the phones
in the house.  That way, my wife can listen to a dr.
laura broadcast, or other radio program on any phone
in the house.  Most of this programs don't seem to
stream properly into linux, but in any case, I have an
audio source already available and would like to use
it.  

The 2nd application is to take the output of a baby
monitor and hook it into a meetme conference (again
though line in on a sound card).  This would allow my
wife and/or I to listen to the monitor from any phone
in the house.  This would allow us to both listen into
the audio from the monitor without having to find the
monitor and keep it equipped with fresh batteries,
etc...

It seems like the ability to feed in line-in could
solve both problems for me.

3) Is there any way for Asterisk to take external
state  from the network to inform it's decision
making?  For example, we have an enclosed garage, and
sometimes we take out 1.5 year old for a drive to get
her to go to sleep, and leave her in the car seat in
the car in the garage to nap (with the doors open for
ventilation!).  We leave the door from the garage into
the house open so we can hear her.  Our alarm system
tells our automation system (homeseer), that that door
is open, and homeseer can then de-energize the garage
doors so if I come home from work early, I don't wake
up the baby.

What would be great is if Asterisk could detect from
homeseer that the garage door was open, and not ring
the downstairs phones when the door was open
(indicating our baby was sleeping).  Similarly if she
is sleeping in the nursery upstairs, and that door was
closed, asterisk would not ring the phone in that
room.

Anyone have an idea as to how to effect such behavior?


Thanks in advance, and my apologies if this info is
available in an existing document.


Thanks,
Mike


		
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