Noob getting started with 1 PSTN, softphone + 2 x PSTN handsets

Hi Everyone,

I’m teaching myself and digging into Asterisk, freepbx etc and setting up a basic system.

My setup:

  • Old PC with freepbx installed
  • Hardware card 2 fxs and 2 fxo (DAHDI) - working.
  • 1 PSTN line (+27 21 000 0000)
  • 2 PSTN handsets (motorola + unbranded)
  • 1 softphone (Linphone on my droid)

I followed the freepbx wiki guide to the “creating extensions” part, but am kinda stuck and need some help.

The guide keeps referring to commercial modules etc. and I’m not
really sure where to go from here other than buying stuff I should be
able to do without at this time.

Basically what I want is to at least be able to pick up the phone and
dial out with the PSTN line, or have my motorola ring when somone dials
in to the PSTN line.

My hardware card is working. Asterisk sees the card and the 2x fxs
and fxo ports. I have my phone line connected to port 1 (fxo), and my
motorola connected to port 3 (fxs).

Please correct me if I’m wrong but the general outline of what I need to do is as follows:

  • Set up extensions (one to be used for phone line, one to be used for Motorola handset, one for softphone)
  • Set up phone (???)
  • Map phone to extension (???)
  • Set up trunk (???)
  • Set up dialing rules - inbound, outbound routes (e.g from incoming, ring extension for Motorola?)

Is there anything else I’m missing?

I’d appreciate if someone could help me with the steps. I have no
issue doing my own research, but at the moment I’m a bit overwhelmed
with all the info and in need of simplicity and direction before I can
figure out what I need to dig in to next.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

i won’t do a whole tutorial, but here are a few steps to get you moving. first a bit of basic how things work

  1. inbound calls - they come in via your trunk (in this case the underlying hardware is your pstn line), the call routes to the context you specify in the trunk definition, which then uses your inbound route to process the call. the inbound route can handle all dids, or just a specific did and can route to most places (time conditions, rung groups, queues, direct to an extension, voicemail, etc.)
  2. outbound calls - when you dial from your phone, the system looks at what you are dialing and uses the outbound route that matches what you are dialing. so if you have outbound routes for domestic dialing (7,10,11 digits), international dialing (perhaps using a pin code for security) and a route for 911, the system will use the appropriate route based on what you dial. if you dial 555 1212 it will use the domestic outbound route. you can specify in the outbound route what to add to the number dialed as well as what to strip from what is dialed. if you want to force everyone to first dial 9 before dialing the phone number, then the outbound route can strip out the 9. it can also add to what is dialed. often a pstn line requires you to dial a 1 when dialing “long distance”. so if you dial 777-555-1212 the outbound route can change that to be 1 777 555 1212 before sending it out on the trunk.
  3. extensions - in your case you need three - one for each motorla handset and one for the softphone. once the extension is defined, you can put the extension parameters into the phones - most likely they will need the ip address of the pbx (register server), the extension number (called user id on the phone most likely) and the sip secret to be able to register with the pbx. nearly every phone has GUI access to set up these parameters. as you get more sophisticated, you and look at using the end point manager to build configs for the phones and have the phones pull their configs from the pbx. but in your case, i would start by manually configuring the phones.
  4. trunk - the trunk defines how the pbx will interface with your analog card. if you are using a recent FreePBX distro it may detect the card for you. there are lots of posts on the forum and info on the wiki on how to setup an analog card/trunk.
  5. ring groups - since you have three phones, you probably want all three phones to ring when someone calls you. look at ring groups. you specific the extensions to be rung and the ring strategy and what happens if no one answers. your inbound route would send all calls to the ring group.
  6. time conditions - these, coupled with time groups, are used to for scheduling. since this is at your home, you might want all calls going to voice mail between 9am and 8am. you would set up a time group with those hours and then reference that time group in a time condition. the time condition would send calls to the ring group outside of those hours and straight to voicemail during those hours. you would have your inbound route send calls to the time condition instead of straight to the ring group.

there are lots more things you can do but this should give you a basic overview. there are books out there on how to set things up as well. i don’t remember their titles but i am sure someone on here will mention them.