[Asterisk-Users] USB handset wanted

[Matt Riddell]

Ondrej Valousek wrote:
> Hello all asterisk users!
> 
> Question: Does anybody know about any good USB handset that would 
> understand SIP and Asterisk and will run with Linux?

USB Phones don't understand anything.  They are effectively four components:

	a) Microphone
	b) Speaker
	c) LCD Display
	d) Buttons

You have to design everything on the client side.  If you don't 
understand USB extensively this would be rater a difficult task.

> I have found tons of them, but they are mainly only supported in Windows 
> environment.

Because people have written drivers for them (often the manufacturer)

> I would like to set up new phone system in our company that would be 
> based on asterisk acting as PBX and SIP.

With the clients or the server running Linux?

> If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Any help would be much 

Well, it's definitely doable, I have written 2 stacks for usb phones, 
although writing it raw (just via usb access) in Linux would be a 
considerable undertaking.

I would recommend that you:

1) Find a phone where the usb audio device is recognised in Linux, and 
then move towards controlling the LCD and buttons.  If you're lucky, the 
LCD will have something like an HD44870 chip controlling it, but bear in 
mind you're obviously going to need to open it up to check the chip.

2) Run a usb sniffer and see what you can get out of the keypad.

3) Write an IAXClient based softphone and include hardware control with it.

4) Rinse, Repeat.

:)

-- 
Cheers,

Matt Riddell
_______________________________________________

http://www.sineapps.com/news.php (Daily Asterisk News - html)
http://www.sineapps.com/rssfeed.php (Daily Asterisk News - rss)