Using Asterisk as a call recording server

[carnch]

I have an AsteriskNOW server that I want to use for nothing more than to record all incoming calls that come in on a DID. I don't need any extensions or outbound routes. It will simply listen for a call to come in via an inbound route, silently answer it and start recording. When the caller hangs up the recording will stop. It needs to be able to record many calls at once.

In a nutshell:

A call comes in to DID of 9999.
Asterisk silently auto-answers the call and begins recording.
Caller hangs up and the call is dropped. Recording is saved to disk.

I have most of this working. When a call comes in I have the inbound route set to force record the call. That all works as expected. The problem is that I have to specify a destination. If I make it a virtual extension I can only accept one call at a time. I can't find a module that will answer the call silently, record and then disconnect when the user hangs up. I've tried using "Terminate Call - Place caller on hold forever" as the destination but the call never gets recorded.

Surly this isn't as hard as I am making it. I'm using AsteriskNOW 11 with FreePBX to configure.

[david55]

Remove FreePBX. Most of your problems are through trying to work round FreePBX.

Remembering that Asterisk Extension is closer to FPBX virtual extension, and FPBX extensions are normally Asterisk devices, you may only need one line of dialplan, consisting of a single Asterisk extension that runs the Record application, with a filename based on the extension number (i.e. DID digits) and the time).

If you want to insist on using FreePBX use http://community.freepbx.org/ for peer support.

[carnch]

I have no problem removing FreePBX from the mix. I'm not fluent at editing the configuration files but I would be willing to do that. Can you post an example of a dial plan to answer the call, start recording and stop the recording on hang up?

[david55]

As a general principle I don't do that, but as this is so trivial, I'll make an exception, on the understanding that I haven't fully analysed your requirement, and you may need to make some adjustments, for which you should read the documentation, and also on the understanding that I haven't tested this.

[default]
exten=>9999,1, Record(${UNIQUEID}.wav,5,0,qx)

[carnch]

That worked perfectly. Thank you.

The only issue I face now is that if there is more than 5 seconds of silence the server hangs up the call with a "silence/1&cannot-complete-as-dialed&check-number-dial-again,noanswer" Playback.

Is there is a way to disable that so that the call will continue until the other end hangs up?

[david55]

Yes. Read the documentation. E.g. type "core show application record" at the CLI prompt, or look in http://www.asteriskdocs.org/ for the appendix which lists the dialplan applications.