[Asterisk-Users] Not answering inbound a line used for outboun

[Jerry]

Hi,

On Sun Jun 12 09:11:13 CDT 2005, Rich Adamson wrote:
>
> > exten => s,1,Wait(1)
> > exten => s,2,GoTo(s,1)
> >
> > If I'm on the console when a call comes in, it loops through this bit of
> > code a bunch of times. I'm guessing I could lengthen the "Wait(1)" time,
> > but is there any other way to do this?
>
> Sure there is, but without knowing what type of pstn interface your
> using, can't suggest an exact coding method. For me (with a TDM-fxo card),
> the zapata.conf entry for that channel has a context=nowhere kind of
> statement. Since the "nowhere" context doesn't exist, nothing in asterisk
> will answer that pstn line.

Sorry about the lack of info; I should have mentioned it's an FXO card.

Your "nowhere" suggestion seems to fit the bill. Would it be possible to
create blank [nowhere] context, so that things are complete, and would
that still achieve the same effect?

> You can also use one of the fax detect mechanisms (including spandsp) to
> sense incoming calls, and if its an incoming fax call send it to a

That's an intersting use that I hadn't thought of; but the FXO card is
sharing a line with an FXO device, so it shouldn't answer.

But, on those lines, I have been reading a bit about Asterisk and Fax,
and it's a bit confusing, to say the least. To just answer and recieve
a fax, do I need to compile/link against anything else, or will a reasonably
current build of Asterisk do this out of the box? (I found a "fax" extension
refrence when doing my search for the no answer question, but it is
unclear if this is a stub or if all of the functionality is there)

> > Now, two other related questions:
> > Can Asterisk recognize that something other then a Zap card has a line
> > offhook? (ie there is a fax transmission in progress)
>
> You'll have to clearify the above better. If you're asking about another
> bridged phone on the same analog pstn line, no asterisk doesn't currently
> have code in it that would recognize speech on the line, lack of a dial
> tone, or any other parameter that would suggest the line is in use. (The
> TDM card's chipset can detect it, but the code isn't in asterisk to take
> advantage of it.)

Ok, I'm not sure what you mean by "another bridged phone".

I used to have an old-fangled analog phone, and when someone picked up
another extension on the same PSTN line, it had an LED that came on, even
onhook. So, I'm assuming there is a way to "sense" the line is offhook
somewhere. I've read about the dialtone issue, but I think that trying
to recognize dialtone/speech is further down the line, once you've gone
offhook, but I could be mistaken.

> > Can I do something interesting with CallerID? (for example, create a log
> > of all faxes that called us, or answer certain numbers inside of
asterisk)
>
> Sure you can. Take a look at the various README files in:
>  /usr/src/asterisk/doc
> and particularily the README.variables file.

Well, I checked out Asterisk from CVS, so the path is different, but the
files are in there. I briefly looked through this when I installed, but
this list and the Wiki have been good refs as of late.

Thanks for the reminder though; I had definately forgotten about that dir.

To record interesting things through the dialplan though, I'd need some
actual context with at least the start extension, correct? (In which case,
Could I have it do it's thing and then ignore the incoming call if it
doesn't like it?)

> However, be careful with CallerID assumptions. Telemarketing and junk fax
> generators typically disable sending any CallerID info, so it won't be
> all that useful.

Yes, I understand that. I'm looking rather at letting paticular people
call the fax ine and pick up with asterisk, before the fax machine kicks
in. For the accounting stuff, I'm more interested in getting an idea of
line utilization (how many incoming faxes, and from where), rather then
being able to pinpoint someone sending junkfaxes.

Thanks,
J