[asterisk-users] Asterisk, POTS and plain handsets

[Steve Totaro]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Steve <astuser at braingia.org> wrote:
> 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

I tried the same thing about six or seven years ago.  It isn't going
to work (or at least not that I am aware of).  How many lines are you
talking about.  If it is just a few, you could look at ATAs (they are
relatively cheap), a card with FXS ports, or SIP phone.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro