[asterisk-users] Survey: In what ways do you use Asterisk at your house?

[Anselm Martin Hoffmeister]

Am Montag, den 13.11.2006, 16:51 -0500 schrieb mitcheloc:
> For about a year and a half now I've had Asterisk set up to unlock my
> front door at my house when calling a certain number. I locked it down
> by using caller id (not the most secure, but hey nobody knows the
> phone number to my door). Speed dialing your front door is one of the
> coolest things you can do.

<ot>
In my parents' home (installed nearly 10 years ago, when I stilled lived
there), we have a Logitech mouse with a CAT5 cable (instead of PS/2)
connected to a RJ45 wall outlet in the hall - click the right mouse
button to open/stop/close the garage door (left button is broken -
Darwin selected this neat mouse for us). With LED light indicator of
door status of course.
</ot>

Well, for the original topic:
My * server is in a colo about 300km from here (strictly speaking, not
"my house"). It connects to five different SIP providers, about 15 SIP
provider accounts. There are a few softphone users on it, and I have a
DSL-connected Fritz!Box in my flat which has a POTS connection (unused
except for 112 emergency - I have to rent a POTS to get DSL on the same
line) and internal ISDN S0 for my Siemens Gigaset with two mobile
handsets and two internal numbers.

Additionaly, most of my family has some kind of VoIP equipment because
nowadays you get it for free when getting your DSL setup. So I assigned
"internal" numbers and can call them for free through my *.

Of course * does least cost routing, voicemail, forward-to-mobile can be
activated or deactivated by dialing a certain extension. Callback for my
mobile (because in certain situations that is way cheaper than calling
directly), e-mail notification of calls and voice messages...

For selecting the outgoing line, I decided to use the numbering scheme
also used on german landlines: Dial 010xx or 0100yy to select a phone
company, then the regular number. If I ommit this "call by call prefix",
the default provider is used. I do not like to dial a "0" prefix for
_all_ my calls (because it is so eighties, isn't it?), so I defined that
area codes MUST be dialled along the number in all calls. I use to dial
them anyway because most of my calls are not in the same area code
anyway. To make phonebook dialling easier with softphones I reserved the
numbers starting "44" and "49" to be international numbers (rewrite to
"0044" and "0049", and "+44" and "+49" work as well - 99+% of all calls
are to Germany and UK). All other [2-9] numbers are defined internal,
with the "9" numbers being "functions" like setting the voicemail delay
(931 + number of seconds) or the most important extensions of them all,
the talking clock (999)

Most recently I figured the SMS problems I had, so now I have *-internal
SMS facilities, like texting over to my family (and back), and I can
even update my handset with new ringtones and logos. Pretty pr0n. I
should use that for system notifications once I finish mending the
scriptworks.

One feature I just love is the ability to have parallel ringing. If I am
away, carrying my laptop, I can turn on "twinkle" (or X-Lite, for those
few minutes a month that I actually run windows) and will receive those
calls arriving on my landline number. A customer of mine would not
believe me I was calling (answering an email) from San Francisco back to
Bonn, having my regular landline CallerID... Sent her a postcard later
that day ;-)

I love playing around and testing features. Having the possibility to
listen in to voicemail recordings is one of my goals for the time
coming, but I do not yet know which part of my equipment to use for it
(I'd need a phone to answer when calls from a specific callerid come in,
e.g. "300" which is my VoiceMailMain extension). I could of course use a
softphone for that, as my PC is running most of the time when I am awake
and at home - and my flat is small enough. We'll see.

BR
Anselm