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OBiTalk for Asterisk

Started by yhfung, March 07, 2011, 03:31:38 PM

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yhfung

Is there any plan to have OBiTalk to Asterisk such that we may access OBiTalk using the service provided by Asterisk?

YH
Hong Kong and China OBi Users Group
www.telecom-cafe.com

QBZappy

Hi,

You can peer Asterisk to the OBi. This will give you access to the services offered on either box to each other. There is a thread about this on the forum.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

yhfung

Thank you very much for your response.

At the present moment, we have to use OBi110 as a gateway between OBitalk and Asterisk. If we do not hve the OBiTalk, how can we do it?

We need OBiHai engineers to develop an OBiTalk native application specifically for Asterisk without the need of OBi110 such that we may talk to other end points of OBiTalk.

YH
Hong Kong and China OBi Users Group
www.telecom-cafe.com

MichiganTelephone

Quote from: yhfung on March 12, 2011, 04:46:30 AMWe need OBiHai engineers to develop an OBiTalk native application specifically for Asterisk without the need of OBi110 such that we may talk to other end points of OBiTalk.

::)   ::)   ::)   ::)   ::)

How much of a bounty did you say you were offering for them to do this? ;D

Exactly why would you think they should take the time to develop a native application for Asterisk when all you need to do is use an Obihai device as a gateway to Asterisk?

For some reason I tend to suspect they have better ways to spend their development time.
Inactive, no longer posting or responding to messages.  Goodbye and good luck.  Some of my old Obihai-related blog posts have been moved to http://tech.iprock.com - note this in NOT my blog; I have simply given the owner permission to repost some of my old stuff.

yhfung

OBiHai can provide endpoints for mobile phones and PC, why do not they provide end point for Asterisk directly?

OBiHai bussiness guys please know that we would like to buy OBi110 or OBi100 ATA even OBiTalk has a native interface for Asterisk. Besides that OBiHai may deal with other IDD companies to have a better deal for providing making long-distance calls when the endpoints calling other PSTN numbers of other countries, just like Skype.

YH
Hong Kong and China OBi Users Group
www.telecom-cafe.com

QBZappy

Hi,

Ward over at PBX in a Flash might be interested in this integration. Their flavor of Asterisk has hooks into Skype, GV, etc...

I know Ward is a member on this forum. How about it Ward. Any magic between PBX in a Flash and the Obi. That would be the ultimate in the "Favorite OBi Tricks" category. The OBi people would be very fortunate indeed if Ward took an interest in this. All the Asterisk nerds would certainly take note. Heck I bet the OBi people would even help him with details on how to do it.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

MichiganTelephone

QBZappy's comment caused a thought to occur to me.

The OBiAPP program provides a "shim" between the OBiTALK network and a standard softphone.  Unfortunately, in its present form it is Windows-only software.  I'd love to see it ported to Unix/Linux but I have the distinct impression that's not going to happen anytime soon.  But anyway, my point is that if a softphone can connect to the OBiTALK network via the "shim", then Asterisk should be able to as well.  Basically all you have to do is set up Asterisk to pretend it's a softphone, which is what you're in effect doing when you set it up to work with several commercial VoIP providers.  If OBiAPP would run under Unix/Linux, this would be doable.  Now, granted, you could set up a Windows box and run the OBiAPP program and then connect to that, but that's going to cost you a whole lot more than a $30 OBi100 which will be out in a couple of weeks and give you the same functionality, plus an FXS port for one of your Asterisk extensions, plus the possibility of a gateway to a Google Voice account (especially useful if you're still running pre-1.8 Asterisk) or another SIP account.

But assuming you really want to connect directly for some reason, as I noted in a previous post (I think), I was able to get OBiAPP to run ONCE on a Mac under WINE (not CrossOver), and it sort of worked, thought there were definitely issues. But when run that way it wasn't reliable and I couldn't get it to work again, though I didn't put a lot of effort into it either.  I'm assuming that it works as intended on a Windows box.  It might also work in something like VirtualBox - as I say, I really didn't put any significant amount of effort into it.

Also, just so you know, the Google Voice integration in PBX in a Flash comes in two different flavors, one of which relies on channel drivers included in Asterisk version 1.8, and the other on a somewhat kludgey callback system that works in earlier versions of Asterisk (I wrote a couple of how-to articles for those who wanted to accomplish it on Asterisk/FreePBX systems that don't run PBX in a Flash, so I'm pretty familiar with the techniques).  The point is that in neither case did Google Voice offer any assistance whatsoever.  And the Skype support either depends on using a commercial Skype channel driver ($66 for a single channel, last time I looked), or a really kludgey method that involves actually running a Skype client on your Linux box (I installed it just to see if I could get it to work, and it did, but it was such a resource hog that I took it down again).  But again, I'm pretty sure that Skype didn't cooperate with the PBX in a Flash folks in any way, though they may have had a hand in the commercial channel driver used with Asterisk.

I'd be happy if the Obihai folks would release a Linux version of OBiAPP (if they release a Linux version then either the MacPorts, FINK project, or Rudix people will likely port it to the Mac, if Mac users want it, although in my case I'd just run it on a local Linux server and connect to it from my Mac).  But to me personally, that's not a real high priority compared to a few other things I'm waiting to see (although it would definitely be a neat thing to play with).  But if we can get even that much support for Asterisk, I think we should be happy.  And keep in mind, in a couple of weeks you can buy an OBi100 or OBi110 for a lot less than that single channel Skype license, and you'll get a whole lot more value from it (just my personal opinion).
Inactive, no longer posting or responding to messages.  Goodbye and good luck.  Some of my old Obihai-related blog posts have been moved to http://tech.iprock.com - note this in NOT my blog; I have simply given the owner permission to repost some of my old stuff.

ckleea

It is right that a port of OBiApps to Linux will do most of the things. Only command line operation is needed. No need for a GUI that would waste the time and resources in development and actual running. Once it is available, the softphone is then able to connect. Windows machine is too expensive to run. It also generates more noise and needs energy.

If OBi110 is available in a larger quantity, I am sure it can generate more noise and requests.