TIPS Confused Newbie, simple PBX question, please help....

[Bobak]

Thanks in advance for your time.

I have 3 rooms which I would like to connect via a PBX telephone system, like the Panasonic TEA308.

I have 1 outside line and 3 internal telephones in the 3 rooms, can I do something with this PBX in a flash to avoid buying the Panasonic PBX system?

I was thinking something like install PBXinaflash on my windows PC, connect all the 3 internal lines and 1 outside line to my PC by some PCI card with telephone jacks inputs and setup my PBX internally so that all the 3 rooms can connect to each other and press 9 for outside line.

Is this even remotely possible? or I'm just way wrong and the only way is to buy the Panasonic system?


Sincerely yours,

Bobak.

 

[leemason]

By outside line I assume you mean an analogue line?

Well yes that is possible, there are plenty of analogue line cards that will work with Asterisk.

As for running the system on your Windows PC: No. PIAF does not run under Windows. You can run it as a virtual machine (such as under VMware Player) but I wouldn't recommend it if the machine is just a desktop system (and in a virtual machine it would not be able to address the analogue card either).

Much better to buy a small PC or even a Raspberry Pi (There is a PIAF implementation on this) and then use this as the phone system. The RaspPi will not be able to use a PCI card but there are some USB connected analogue interfaces (called FXO interfaces) that should work with the RaspPi (maybe someone who has one could chip in).

But basically what you are suggesting for running 3 phone with one outside line (dialling 9 to make an outside call, etc) is all very possible.

 

[Bobak]

Thank you very much Lee, guess I have a lot of reading ahead of me to familiarize myself on this.

Highly appreciated.

 

[leemason]

Something like this will give you the single analogue line that you need: http://www.voipon.co.uk/openvox-a400p01-p-669.html. I can also be upgraded to more if needed.

This one is for a machine with a PCI bus but if you have PCI-express then there are other alternative cards. This is a UK site like as I am in the UK but cards from OpenVOX, Digium, and Sangoma and pretty good bets.

Raspberry Pi might be more difficult to get an FXO interface for but there are possibilities:

1. Sangoma do a USB/FXO adapter but I don't know if this will work with the Pi
2. You could use a networked (SIP trunked) FXO Gateway device (Grandstream and other makes some of these) but they might be more expensive.

If I were you I would start off by getting an old PC and installing PIAF and using a couple of PC based soft phones (e.g. X-Lite or Zoiper) to test things out and get familiar with PIAF before going on to try anything else.

 

[wardmundy]

Bobak: The easy solution with a Raspberry Pi is just to add an external OBi110. It gives you an FXS and FXO port for under $50.