VOIP, Asterisk, 3CX etc etc

[cbredfred]

Was just wondering if anyone was using a Joggler as a PBX (Telephone system)?

I use 3CX on a Windows machine that I use as my server, but would love to get it running on a Joggler seeing as I have 4 of them to play with.
I've tried getting it to install on Mevi's XP build but it's still giving me stress, so I was thinking that "PBX in a Flash" or some kind of Asterisk installation might be the way to go.
Anyone got any experience of Asterisk on a Joggler?

[acesabe]

You could see if you canget Voyage One to boot on a Joggler, it's primary use is networking, but the One version has Asterisk, and there is an MPD version also. They are designed to run on Alix boards which have no GPU so run headless, so if you aren't familliar with ssh and command line, you may be out of luck as I doubt Voyage even has any video drivers ootb!

http://linux.voyage.hk/voyage-one

Another possibility which may better suit your needs migth be FreePBX, which runs on generic PC's, we use this on an old PIII which had been our PBX for years!!

http://www.freepbx.org/download-freepbx

Keep us posted!

[Mevi]

cbredfred,I know nothing about VOIP, but wonder if the services your app needs are set to disabled? That or one of the media sharing services is conflicting. If you'd not tried enabling services, try following the desktop shortcut to see if setting to' default' and rebooting does the trick. Just a thought. There's also Dan's XP build to try out.

[cbredfred]

Thank you for the replies folks.
I finally got 3CX installed and running this evening.
Turns out that .Net 4 isn't enough...
I had to install .Net 3.5 as well to get it to install!
Tomorrow I'll shutdown 3CX on my server after I've got my Fritzbox 7270 (Router with loads of VOIP hardware) and Linksys SPA3102 all talking to the Joggler.
Then I can start testing it to see if the Joggler can cope with only 1/2 gig of RAM.
If all goes well I'd like to move the installation off the External 2.5" HDD back on to a USB stick.

[cbredfred]

The mighty Joggler with it's 3CX PBX hat on...

Thanks to Mevi's XP build and 3CX's free version of their phone system software, I now have a Joggler PBX that only consumes 5 to 10 watts of power.
The 3CX software tries to start it's dozen services when XP boots up but only 3 of them make it, I have to start the manager console (see photo) to start the rest up. After that it runs fine.
The only thing that doesn't work is the 3CX Skype Gateway, which is a software method of getting Skype to talk to SIP.
I got around this by using the Xconnect software that came with my Xlink BTTN that I use to provide a mobile phone connection in to my system.

Still not sure if I'll use the Joggler as my "Production" system instead of my server, but the experiment HAD to be done.

[Juggler]

The mighty Joggler with it's 3CX PBX hat on...

Thanks to Mevi's XP build and 3CX's free version of their phone system software, I now have a Joggler PBX that only consumes 5 to 10 watts of power.
The 3CX software tries to start it's dozen services when XP boots up but only 3 of them make it, I have to start the manager console (see photo) to start the rest up. After that it runs fine.
The only thing that doesn't work is the 3CX Skype Gateway, which is a software method of getting Skype to talk to SIP.
I got around this by using the Xconnect software that came with my Xlink BTTN that I use to provide a mobile phone connection in to my system.

Still not sure if I'll use the Joggler as my "Production" system instead of my server, but the experiment HAD to be done.

Wow, that looks really good !

I'd love to have a go at doing something like this myself. Are there any links you have found useful, you could post ? And/or any further write-up you could do ?

Be interesting to hear what problems you had and what you did / think will resolve them. Also be good to hear how things go with this too.

Shame about the Skype to SIP gateway. Do you think it may be possible to get it working ? I have one of the three (3) skypephones which still has free Skype working on it (certain older versions of the firmware no longer work) and have thought about using this to gain access to a gateway and then use some other provider to the destination.

How dependent upon on all the VoIP stuff in the Fritz box is your setup ? I don't have a Fritzbox, just a bog standard router/modem, do you think this would cause any further issues ?

Some great work you've done ! Hope you can move it over to production as I think this sort of thing is ideal for a Joggler.

Cheers

[cbredfred]

Well Juggler, I appear to have run out of steam on this project for the time being.
Since Saturday I've spent a day and a half installing all of the Windows updates hoping that it would solve the services not starting problem.... It didn't!
I spent another half day figuring out that only one Joggler out of five that has a working NIC in Windows and that booting with the network cable plugged in causes it to fail to boot 4 times out of 5!!!
I had decided to use the wired network so that wireless network drop outs wouldn't cause problems with voice quality, instead it just made everything take much longer because of the intermittent booting.
I believe it will run the VOIP calls across the wireless without problems, but that was the last thing I was going to test.
I also spent time downloading Dan's Windows Server 2003 builds so that I could test the installation of the 3CX Gateway for Skype software.
I had all sorts of problems with "int 37" errors scrolling up the screen until I remembered that Dan does his builds on an Openpeak version of the Joggler, thankfully one of my five is also an Openpeak version, so I tried it and that got rid of the int 37 error (no mention of this error in the 29 pages of the http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=270 thread, unless I missed it!!!) . Skype Gateway still doesn't run!
I'm starting to think that some of the critical stuff that this software needs to startup the services on bootup has been stripped out of the Joggler Windows builds, even when "Default" is activated as Mevi suggested earlier in this thread. I started today with the thought that maybe I should build a "full fat" Windows build of XP or Server 2003 for the Joggler and see where that leads. I'm just not sure I have the skill, energy and time.
I'd like to come back and try to answer some of your other question, Juggler, so please be patient with me until I get some steam back.

[Juggler]

Thanks for the reply and it is good to hear how things are going, whether good or otherwise...

After seeing this post I got fired up to try out one of the Windows distros for the Joggler. I wanted to see what it was like but as I did an install onto a flash drive, didn't want to play for too long. That led me to getting a hard drive going on the joggler with Windows. I haven't managed this yet as I haven't cracked the safest powered usb hub and getting it to boot windows problem yet. But I think I have a solution, and I have discovered a few things a long the way, that I hope to post here...

Getting a Win Joggler where the NIC works seems to be a real PITA ! It's been mentioned here that using a USB to Ethernet dongle (few quid on ebay) is probably the best way. I think it was stated here that some of the Chinese Joggler community have found that booting into the stock os and using the wired net for a bit, then booting into Windows can help to help to get the in-built NIC working.

On trouble shooting the Skype Gateway - and I'm kind of making the assumption that this runs as a service in Windows; if the event service is running are there any meaningful messages in there ? If you try to start up the Skype Gateway service / program from the command line, maybe some error code or message would be returned. A program I use is Turbo Services Manager (TSM) :

http://www.turboirc.com/tsm/

I like it as I can turn on/off services very easily, so I only have the services I need on. Maybe it can show you something useful.

Just having a look at the MS site and the NET Start command, which is used to start services on the command line. Maybe there are other services that the Skype Gateway depend on that are unable to start or just not there ? I recall that when a service fails to start, there is usually no indication of this to the user.

You might find these useful :

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu ... start.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu ... tcmds.mspx

A few weeks ago I was after the latest version of Process Explorer and came across Mark Russinovich's blog :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysi ... s/bb963890

His "The case..." articles are really good and show how you can use sysinternal tools to troubleshoot some real bizarre Windows issues. Maybe you could get some ideas from there ?

Once I've got the hard drive powering issue cracked, I hope to get a win joggler set up and am looking forward to play with 3CX a bit, and will see if I can add anything to what you have found with the Skype Gateway issues. Not sure when that is going to be though... If anything else comes to mind, will post here.

Hope this is of some use and look forward to hearing how things go.

[Mevi]

Cbredfred, the instructions to build windows from scratch might seem a big job, but i managed to figure out how to do this myself without a guide, with just a little trial and error!! Your posts don't suggest to me that you would struggle. Both Dan and I have worked from non-standard distributions of Windows. It might be that a standard install of Windows is a good place for you to start. There's always us lot here to give you some advice if you get stuck.

[danfoshizzle]

Just bear in mind a full install of windows will be a little sluggish, its not too difficult though! Best off trying to find a balance between performance and usability for your personal needs.

[cbredfred]

Well Dan, as long as the Joggler can play my "P1$$ OFF sales people" message, which everyone has to listen to, within 15 seconds of answering the call then that's good enough for me!

[danfoshizzle]

Haha, inventive joggler usage, I like it!

[Mevi]

Performance can be improved on a full install. Here are a few reg files and batch files that'll help things.