[asterisk-users] Answering machine answers after pickup a phone.

[Jorge Barreiro]

O Venres, 5 de Agosto de 2011 17:42:28 Shaun Ruffell escribiu:
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 01:14:58PM +0200, Jorge Barreiro wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > thanks for your time!
> > 
> > O Venres, 5 de Agosto de 2011 12:35:05 escribiches:
> > > Completely normal operation.
> > > You need to read and understand more basic telephony and analog lines
> > > to understand why that won't work.
> > 
> > I definitely have a lot to learn yet.
> > 
> > > Asterisk needs to be in control, and once someone answers a phone not
> > > under Asterisk control, or the call is abandoned there is little you
> > > can do.
> > 
> > What I pretend is that asterisk detects that it's not under control and
> > gets out of the way. The same way it detects a remote hangup and stops
> > the dialplan, it could detect that someone else answered (the line is
> > not ringing anymore) and discard it the same way it does when the remote
> > part hangup.
> > 
> > I've read comments in forums and tutorials that seem to imply that this
> > happens, but I couldn't find any confirmation (and indeed, it's not
> > happening to me).
> 
> When I first installed Asterisk in my home I used it in the way that you
> described: as a glorified answering machine to email to me any voice mail.
> 
> I think what you want is the WaitForRing()[1] dial plan application.  This
> function will wait x number of seconds, then look for *another* ring to
> come in. If someone answered the phone before the timeout to that function
> Asterisk would stop processing the dial plan.
> 
> [1] https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Application_WaitForRing
> 
> I ran into a couple of issues with WaitForRing(). The first being if
> someone answered the phone and then quickly hung up *and* a new phone call
> came in within the timeout period, Asterisk wouldn't know that the line
> was ringing due to a new call. The second problem was I never got the dial
> tone detection working so that if I tried to *place* a call from Asterisk
> while someone was on the house line I would aggravate my wife.
> 
> Since coming to work for Digium I've seen in the data sheets for the FXO
> interfaces that there is a capability to detect when a parallel device on a
> line goes off hook. This would allow Asterisk to have a better sense of the
> state of the line (like it currently can detect when a port is unplugged
> and there is not battery by generating a red alarm.) but I haven't looked
> into getting that information off the hardware and up into Asterisk.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Shaun


That application looks like a good solution. I can't test it until Monday, but 
I'll try it and let you know. The drawbacks you mention doesn't seem too 
inconvenient in my case.

Anyway, I started with this cause I thought it was an easy first step, if it 
gets so complicated I think I'll go forward and put all phones under the 
control of the PBX.

Thank you everybody for your help.