[asterisk-users] Asterisk, POTS and plain handsets

[Steve]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 10:35:13PM -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
> Post the output from Asterisk's CLI.  I think maybe your contexts are
> overlapping or are the same.  It should say something to the effect of
> "Starting simple switch"

When I take one of the plain phones off-hook, just lifting the 
receiver, here's the CLI output.  Zap3/1 is an FXO port which is 
connected to the POTS line.  Note that sometimes taking the phone 
off-hook doesn't do it but only when the receiver is hung up or put back 
on-hook does asterisk start to detect a ring.  

The context home-incoming has one thing to do, dial a SIP phone for 20 
seconds.  On normal incoming calls this works great.

    -- Starting simple switch on 'Zap/3-1'
[Jun 27 08:31:16] ERROR[8889]: callerid.c:540 callerid_feed: No start 
bit found in fsk data.
    -- Executing [s at home-incoming:1] Dial("Zap/3-1", "SIP/gxp20001,20") 
in new stack
  == Using SIP RTP CoS mark 5
    -- Called gxp20001
    -- SIP/gxp20001-081d50c0 is ringing
  == Spawn extension (home-incoming, s, 1) exited non-zero on 'Zap/3-1'
    -- Hungup 'Zap/3-1'

> Check what context your FXO channels are in, something like
> context=from-verizon and then check the context of your FXS (plain
> telephones), they should be in a different context such as
> context=to-phones.

The FXO ports come from the telco drop to the asterisk server.  The card 
doesn't have any FXS ports on it rather these phones are also connected 
directly to the telco drop.  So /something/ is happening where when one 
of these phones is taken off-hook (or sometimes put back on-hook), 
asterisk is catching it as being interesting event.

> Also, make sure you have immediate=no

Didn't have it directly in the channel config, added it and rebooted and 
no luck.

> Then check your dialplan and make sure those contexts do what you want
> and you are not accidentally including a context where it should not
> be.

The contexts themselves do what I want but for some reason asterisk is 
trying to handle an off-hook situation anywhere else on the copper as an 
incoming call and handling it through the home-incoming context.

My hope is to be able to have asterisk act as an answering machine would 
on this line, sharing the line with other regular phones.  When a phone 
call comes in, I'd like it to ring the two SIP phones on the network and 
then if no one picks up after N seconds, answer the call.  Obviously, 
the regular phones would ring normally on an incoming call because 
they're still connected to the telco drop.

Thanks for any further assistance.

Steve