Interfacing with Asterisk

[gaztech46]

Hi,
I'm a complete newbie here so bear with me if any questions seem stupid...
I'm currently running Asterisk on a Raspberry PI on my home network. I primarily want to use it as a server for about 10 "phones" in my property. I do not want these phones to dial out to the outside world - just to communicate with each other internally. However, due to aesthetic reasons I want to use "old style" phones with dials - not buttons so therefore I want pulse dialling.
If I use something like the Linksys SPA-1001 to connect these to how can I deal with the pulse dialling issue versus the required DTMF dialling? I just need to make this work.

Firstly, am I on the right track? If I get the pulse dialling to work (even if I have to make a converter) will the system work as I expect?

Thanks in advance for your patience!

[david55]

Ask Linksys! Either it will work without your doing anything, or it is likely to be impossible.

If you want loop disconnect dialling, I'd strongly suggest using PCI cards. These will be expensive and will not work with the RPI.

[gaztech46]

Ok... I can ask Linksys of course but the spec suggests it won't work in it's native form with pulse dialling. I may have to make a converter - which isn't impossible.

As I said, I'm a newbie here so... I need you guys to make some allowances please until I get into this further. This isn't my field of expertise. I'm aware of VOIP and SIP protocol but have always used commercial systems that cost a fortune and proprietary hardware. Doing this is much deeper!

Loop disconnect dialling...?? What's that?

"PCI cards" for what exactly? ...and what's "the RPI".

I'm sorry if I'm a little dumb about all this but I just want to understand what I need to do to get all this sorted. I'm not expecting anyone to do this for me but a little guidance would be useful if possible.

[david55]

Loop disconnect: alternative name for pulse dialling, e.g. the pulse-DTMF switch on phones is typically labelled LD-MF. The pulses are sent by disconnecting the wire loop down the A leg and back up the B leg, for the duration of the pulse.

PCI: for this purpose includes PCIe, which is the current standard backplane daughter card format for desktop PCs.

RPI: Raspberry Pi.

[gaztech46]

I think I've solved the pulse dialling bit... I tried using a PIC programmed to convert the pulses into DTMF. Works fine - just need to interface it now. Should work ok if I spend some time on it.

The main question though was really will the Asterisk PBX "just" work with internal routing only? I don't want to specify any outgoing gateway as all calls will be internal.

I now know that the Linksys PAP2T adapters will be ok as the interface as long as I can get the pulse dialling - DTMF to work.

I don't really know how to set just this operation up... (without all the other outgoing stuff).

Anyone have any tips as a starting point?

[david55]

Asterisk doesn't care whether peers are internal or external.