Tag: RaspberryPi

Categories
Engineer voip

What’s in a bowl of fruit – IPCortex RaspberryPi

bowl of fruit - click to see IPCortex RaspberryPiIt never ceases to amaze me what we can do with technology. The most generous Rob Pickering of IPCortex sent me a RaspberryPi microcomputer loaded with a cut down version of his PBX.

It was the work of minutes to set up a couple of Lincoln area code (01522) SIP trunks and then define some client devices with which to make phone calls. I then downloaded the 3CX SIP client for Android, free from the Google Play Store, stuck in some simple credentials (user name tref etc) and I was away.

The IPCortex bearing RaspberryPi is ipcortex on raspberrypi screenshot currently plugged in to an Ethernet port in our kitchen. Click on the photo to zoom in. I don’t think my wife has noticed yet but no doubt she will. At that point I will move it to the switch in the attic and leave it there for a general play.

The IPCortex lets me configure any SIPipcortex on raspberrypi - click to enlarge client for the RaspberryPi. In this case a softphone was used and we needed to generate some dummy mac addresses – shown in the photo as 0000001 etc. Ordinarily you would input the MAC address of your deskphone.

In one of the images you can see that there are three users set up – Tref, Joe and John. You might need to click on each image to enlarge for a better view.  I took these screenshots lying in bed this morning. It’s just great what you can do from your phone. You can see the internal IP address of the IPCortex/server plus a glimpse at some of the features.

The 3CX is great for a play but I haven’t3CX SIP softclient running on Samsung Galxy S3 and hanging off the IPCortex on RaspberryPi figured out its ideal set up yet. It currently assumes it is the main phone you want to use when dialing out but I have a number of clients I play with on my handset and I don’t want it to be the main one. I have to switch the 3CX off for normal operation of other phones. It might just be a question of me needing to play with the Galaxy S3 more.

The call quality was great. I made WiFi to PSTN, PSTN to WiFi and WiFi to 3G.

I can see possibilities for home workers and consumers with this technology. You could envisage giving the kids an extension hanging off a local number – press 1 to talk to John etc or they could have their own DDI.

The time is not far off where people manage their own call routing – for example forwarding to their own mobile when not at home. If their package includes free calls to mobiles, or just to family mobiles then this would be a no brainer. This functionality could easily be embedded in a set top box along with a media server, which coincidentally (not) is what me next RaspberryPi project is going to be.

That’s all for now. I’ll report back as I get more to say on this subject.

Ciao…

PS no comments about the untidy cable. I couldn’t find a shorter one and my wife will have enough to say anyway when I get home.

PPS Thanks to Rik Wheeler for helping with the setup and being at the other end for the 3G demo calls.

Categories
Engineer gadgets

More RaspberryPi

Just noticed an email from RS Components had come in 23.30 on Saturday night acknowledging my registration to buy a RaspberryPi and that the boards, once they are in stock, will be allocated on a first come first served basis in order of when requests were received.

That puts me well down the list then because all the fuss surrounding the launch was on Wednesday and I registered on Friday sometime. The fact that the acknowledgement email came in over a day later surely suggests a massive backlog? 😉

Strikes me that it will be interesting to plot the progress of the kids’ coding skills once we get one in the house so watch this space.

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Spot the odd one out – Pi, Apple Pie, @Raspberry_Pi

I get high on RaspberryPiMost people will not have heard about it before today when it hit the headlines. It is also hitting the shops – two of them. It is the way of the future in the here and now. It is affordable and will one day, in one form or another, inevitably permeate into every household on the planet. It is educational, sensational, it’s the RaspberryPi.

Most of you will know by now that the RaspberryPi is a low cost very low cost computer that has been developed to encourage kids to learn to write computer code. The level of interest in the device has been so great that the two outlets chosen to stock the device, Farnell and RS Components, have this morning seen their websites crash due to high levels of traffic 1. A botnet generated DDOS attack could not have done any better. In internet terms it’s the same as the huge round the block queues that unexplainably form outside Apple stores just before a new product launch.

I leave the minutiae of RaspberryPi  to

Continue reading “Spot the odd one out – Pi, Apple Pie, @Raspberry_Pi”