[Asterisk-Users] Analog Phones with Status Light Indicators

[Rich Adamson]

> > > > So before you hamstring your small office into having unnecessary
> > > > growing pains as it expands at some time down the road, think about the
> > > > nicer, larger PBX solutions. 
> > > 
> > > True, but would still be nice to see the status of the people around
> > > you/in your team. How can I offer any sort of comparable/competitive
> > > system without this??
> > 
> > So you are a bug for bug type person.
> > 
> > Maybe it would be better to educate your customer in other options that
> > you can deliver and not trying to deliver what some other hardware does.
> 
> Yes, this is a good idea, and I am trying to convince them that a PC
> based status/display is a better solution (mainly because it is possible
> with asterisk), but at the end of the day, I can see why people would
> prefer to have a phone which at the least, will show them whether the
> person they are wanting to call/transfer to is already on the phone.
> 
> I also really did think that this was already possible with existing
> hardware VoIP phones and the SIP protocol. I *thought* it was working in
> asterisk, or, if it wasn't, then suggestions/pointers on what is needed
> would (hopefully) be met with patches from me (or bounties on the wiki).

What you're looking for is key system functionality, and asterisk is a
pbx. Fully understand that many of the competitive products cross the
old line between key systems and pbx's by providing the most often
wanted features in a single box. Not likely to happen in the near term
with asterisk simply because the majority of the sip phones on the
market don't have the firmware support necessary to turn on/off the
led's for lines (or feature) buttons.