[asterisk-users] building a phone

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 09:40:09AM -0700, Wilton Helm wrote:
> > I assume that the relevant application requires some non-trivial CPU power. I would 
> > exclude e.g. a 486-based systems. 
> 
> I'm not sure that's the case.  The industry has gone in the direction 
> of throwing lots of silicon at a problem, often as an excuse for 
> poorly written code, sometimes in an interpreted language.  

Actually I have stated a bit above that that I would like the system to
support 2 SIP lines (and preferably 6 and more) and allow using Speex in
them.

Supposrt of 2 lines is a must for features such as forwarding. 

> There are a number of high integration CPUs out there that I suspect 
> could do this sort of thing.  I develop device controllers for a 
> variety of industry needs.  They tend to have Ethernet, RS-232, 
> sometimes 1 Mb/s synchronous communication. G711, 

G.711 indeed requires much less CPU power. It is good enough for a
LAN-only setup. Though with a bit of forward-thinking, G.722 support
would also be nice.

> quarter VGA color LCD with touchscreen and control loops running at 
> about a 1 ms rate.  The entire code takes less than 256K in C.  My 
> choice of processor is the DStni Ex (made by Lantronix and sold by 
> Grid Connect) which is a high integration, high speed 186 core with 
> two 10/100 Ethernet Ports and 256K of RAM on it in addition to the 
> usual assortment of other stuff.  The above required platform adds 
> three support chips (one being the LCD controller).  The CPU can run 
> over 100 MHz.  Memory accesses take one clock and typical instructions 
> take two or three.  Cost is in the $10 to $20 range for the chip and 
> power consumption is around 1 W (the LCD backlight takes more than 
> that!)

Again, the main reason for me to require a higher end CPU is audio
compression. But I also want the system to be run by a standard OS. It
needs to be easy to add your own application there.

Here's a plug that would cost you 99$:
http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-sheevaplugdetails.aspx#extern

It has a USB and Ethernet output. 

The core of the system is:
http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/kirkwood/index.jsp
(yes, also two TDM ports with slics. No idea how to use them)

That plug supports running quite a number of Linux distributions
(Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and some others)

What would it take me to port Asterisk or Yate to it? An existing web
interface?

Hackability and ease of development is a must.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir