Our church has 2 phone interface devices so we can either call our services out or call something in and listen at church. They operate like this. if the phone rings they pickup on the first ring. or if you push a button the pickup.
So I have 2 fxs ports on my asterisk server and I want to automate this.
Here is my idea but I don’t know how to make it work.
lets say ext 301 is the church phone 302 is the callout device and 303 is the callin device.
We can’t handle the 40 or 100 lines that might want to listen to a call out so we call to freeconferencecall.com and let the listeners call there. So I setup a speeddial that calls the freeconferencecall.com number and sets the correct options to make that work correctly.
With immediate=yes can I make 302 dial this speeddial just by picking up the line?
If not can I make 302 connect to a internal conference that I can transfer the speedialed connection to after I dial it from 301?
Then for callin listening we can’t do a speed dial since the number we connect to won’t be consistant. So I’ll need to be able to dial and connect to what ever we are listening to and then transfer to either a conference or to 303 and then hang up 301 and the connection will stay until we power down the callin device.
I really want to do as much of this as possible from the freepbx interface so it stays manageable. I’ll install config edit if I have to to enter code for custom destinations or custom extensions.
You have two phone systems there? FXS ports are going to be connected to two analog handsets? Is that right? Or are you interconnecting to something with the FXS?
No, just one phone system, but the church speaker amp system has an incoming and an outgoing phone line connection, these need to connect to the FXS ports.
The callin callout devices are just a small blackbox with an audio port and 2 phone ports and a button to make it pickup the phone. We have 2 one connected to a speaker feed wire from the amp and one connected to a linein feed to the amp.
the way it works is if it has power and a call comes in it picks up the line in the middle of the first ring and connects it to the audio feed. the second phone ports has the analog phone on it so we can also dial out to a conferenceing number “freeconferencecall.com” and the push the button on the blackbox to make it pickup the phone line which then connects the phone line to the audio feed.
since the both pickup automatically on the first ring we have to physically move the phone cord to the one we want to use each time.
This is what I am trying to automate with the phone system.
Since the callout always goes to the same number it think it can be fully automatice - dials the “freeconferencecall.com” number when the callout blackbox button is pushed - triggered by immediate=yes on the fxs port extension settings.
The callin “which is to bring audio from another source thru the phone and then pipe it to the amp to go into the auditorium of the church.” will be different because there are many different phone numbers with access codes that have to be entered before we can connect the audio from the phone to the amp.
If you are doing this some folks can “Attend a virtual church service” you may find Gabcast a great tool. http://gabcast.com/
You can use gabcast to have your services online where folks can use phone or browser to listen and the services can be stored by gabcast and accessed any time (Pushed out via RSS feed / email notices and so on).
You find other churches there doing the same thing
I’d say do both. Using a sound card on your Asterisk Server, you could pipe the sound from the Church and use it as MOH in a queue. I am reasonably certain you could make the queue call “freeconferencecall.com.”
What would be a reason for calling in?
The thing with Gabcast is you would have have to set it up to access your channel and then send the “stop recording” string (#) You have to then manage the episodes online. Could be fairly straight forward. I use it myself, only I manually dial in.
The reason for the call out to freeconferencecall.com is that they can handle up to 100 calls on the conference - we can’t afford that many lines - even voip in the church and freeconferencecall.com is free. They also record the call so those that have to miss the service because they work those hours can call anytime until the next service and listen.
The reason for the call in is that we have volunteer ministers and sometimes they don’t have an inspiration of what to preach so we call the conference number on one of the other congregations in the area or if one of those congregation has a special service we can listen here at our church rather than driving to theirs and filling up their building.
We already have the phone line devices they came with the church sound system. and they give us a control of the incoming and outgoing volume with a knob at the control station.
The only thing I need is help with making the fxs ports on my freepbx box do what I want.
I’m thinking I something like setting up a new context for each fxs port so that the immediate=yes setting can take it into the dial plan. Does this sound like something that might work?