NO JOY Intercom out to sound card PIAF green

shuggans

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I have just recently began to play with pbx in a flash as I am looking at it as an option to replace our existing Nortel BCM450 as part of a migration onto a new infrastructure built up alongside our old infrastructure. I'm no telephony person by any means (I do know the data side of things), but am willing and trying to learn as I go.
I have the latest version of pbx in a flash green set up, a trial sip trunk set up with incoming/outgoing routes, our polycom h323 codec set up as a sip endpoint, as well as a few X-Lite 4 softphones for testing (looking at grandstream models if I can get all the functionality I need figured out from PIAF).
I am currently having a very difficult time getting paging to a sound card to work. At this point I have sound playing while echoing text through flite, however no matter which how to I follow for setting up a paging extension to console/dsp or console/alsa and adding to a paging group in the paging and intercom module there is no sound played out the soundcard when calling that extension, though I do get a beep.
This project has potential to save my company a bunch of $ a month as we currently pay AT&T over $2500 a month for 17 pstn lines into our Nortel system, which I was told was all that was available 3 years ago when it went in. I would love to be able to utilize paf to show administration that replacing the Nortel unit with piaf + sip phones would pay for itself in 3 months and free up at least $2000 a month for our infrastructure project (which we desperately need).
Is there a set of instructions to follow that will work with the latest version of PIAF - Green?
This is my first tango with implementing anthing telephony / any pbx system - it's all very exciting and a niche that's new/exciting to me though.
Thank you for any assistance you are willing to/can provide
 

shuggans

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I've followed about a dozen different forum threads I dug up on google - all seem to be for older versions or do not apply because I'm using PBX in a flash instead of just asterisk w/ freepbx. I think my problem is with actually getting the console to pick up the sound and play it through the soundcard.

Im assuming the beep from the extension set up for playback through the soundcard means that things in piaf are set up correctly. Sound works from the console through flite. Not sure what I'm missing here.

Note: Tried posting my output file, for some reason it doesnt want to t*f*t*p over correctly (creates a blank file), cisco equipment tftps configs just fine. Running Asterisk 11 with FreePBX 2.11 (PiaF-Green from the Version 2.0.6.5.0 - 32 bit iso. Currently testing this system out on a Lenovo 8807-D5U desktop PC (2GB DDR2, Core 2 Duo). If it can meet all of our needs (I have no doubts, your guys' work looks amazing - a better way to phrase this may be "IF I can figure out all the functionality we need") then I would build a better box for it to run in.
 

LesD

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I have played with paging a bit and discovered that it is 'special' - it is not a regular call to an extension.

It works fine on my Astra 6757i phones but I believe will not work on something like an analogue phone, whichever way you connect them.

If everyone has a suitable sip phone then you should not have an issue about paging via phones.

I'm a little surprised that you have started with a paging issue. With 17 lines you obviously have a non-trivial setup there.

Have you identified what features are considered essential in a replacement system and checked that PIAF can meet those requirements?

Also, getting a private system up and running with a couple of phones is not too difficult, but if you are new to all this I do not see you overnight getting a system of this size (what size?) set up and then supporting it yourself after posting here a few times.
 

atsak

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Here's another idea. If you like the nortel system well enough (ie it does everything you want), you can put an asterisk system in front to handle the SIP trunks then pass it to the Nortel system using a T1 line card or gateway for both systems (Nortels' don't do SIP well but you can get T1 cards used on ebay easily and for the asterisk system use a Sangoma). It's advanced but not crazy hard.
 

shuggans

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I hate the nortel system. I got this piece figured out, though the sound qulity is weird for about 10 seconds of the page and then it seems to clear up. Looking at paging to an overhead speaker system (power amplifier out to a daisy chain of unpowered canister speakers in the ceiling).
 

atsak

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I have read elsewhere that you have to "load" the speaker / amp with a single computer speaker near the sound card source and then chain the other speakers off that one. I've seen this done on a client I picked up and wondered what it was for - thinking maybe the "10 seconds" issue is related to that.
 

shuggans

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Interesting. By load, you mean hook up a speaker with a very short audio cable to it to the output connection on the sound card, then out from that speaker to the amplifier?
 

rjaiswal

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I hate the nortel system. I got this piece figured out, though the sound qulity is weird for about 10 seconds of the page and then it seems to clear up. Looking at paging to an overhead speaker system (power amplifier out to a daisy chain of unpowered canister speakers in the ceiling).

A system like that is usually a 70V audio system. The output of a sound card doesn't have the power to drive a 70V speaker.

Out of curiosity, Is the AMP a preamp/amp? or just an AMP? usually there would be a preamp, so you could select different sources, and control volume. Some of these preamps have a "paging" override, where if it sees a large enough signal on the "paging" input, it'll switch to that input. That override circuit, might be causing your issue. Also, most "paging" inputs are mic level, not line level, which is what's being outputted from your sound card.
 

atsak

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Yes, sorry - missed this post - that's what I've seen done elsewhere.
 

mp3geek

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I have connected Piaf to an existing overhead paging system originally connected to an ATT Merlin. The paging modules/amp were standard Bogen stuff. The easiest way was to get a cheap Grandstream phone (one of the older models is best, they use 1/8" headset jacks), connect the headset-out to a line-in input on the paging system and set the Grandstream to auto-answer. Dial the extension and bingo, instant paging. If feedback is a problem (it was for me), you can use a script that answers an extension number, records the page, then dials the Grandstream and plays it back after you hang up. I stole....er...borrowed a script from jmullinix and it works fine :)
 

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