[Asterisk-Users] Digital phones

[Steven Critchfield]

On Sun, 2003-07-06 at 14:52, marrandy wrote:
> On Sunday 06 July 2003 03:25 pm, Steven Critchfield wrote:
> 
> > > Surely though, even something as simple as "visual message waiting 
> indicator"  
> > > has a different code to activate it on a phone, depending on the 
> > > manufacturer.
> > 
> > You just about answered your own question here, different codes for each
> > manufacturer is not equal to standard. Asterisk has support for analog
> > phones, and digital trunking via E1/T1 circuits. This allows you to
> > interconnect to phone systems that might use digital phones. You can
> > also use it via a channel bank to link large amounts of lines to
> > asterisk.
> > -- 
> > Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>
> 
> Hello Steven.
> 
> That's what I thought.  But I don't know much about PBX/key phone systems, so 
> I thought I would ask.
> 
> O.K.- then.
> 
> Is there any support in the program to be able to specify a make/model of 
> phone system, and if that system has the codes available, translate the codes 
> for that system.  
> 
> e.g.  if I found/obtained half a dozen business (digital) phones of one 
> manufacturer, one model, would they be usable ?   (I suspect not, but 
> anything is possible with time and effort).
> 
> Or is the proprietry PBX and phone systems, so totally alien to each other, 
> that is is impossible.

The problem isn't as much controlling the phone, but electrically
interfacing with it. AFAIK, this is one of the ways the proprietary
systems lock you into their phones. Currently there is no hardware to
talk to those phones, let alone the programming to do it. If you find a
card that supports those phones and plugs into a PCI bus, hopefully also
already has linux drivers, then we can see about supporting those
phones.
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>