Project:VOIP

Our most frequently used extension - the back gate visitor phone

Cisco 7970 - the most common IP phone in the space

A few members had been interested in playing with VOIP/SIP things, mostly involving connecting the space phone line to the internet and doing voice menus, sip accounts for members, group chat, joining the Hackerspaces Call in, getting linked up to other hackspaces, etc.

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Functional features:

• Internal dialing between floors (really easy rather than going back and forth back and forth to talk with someone / do something)
• External calls get prompts for general and travel information.
• Doorbell-style ringtone on phone rings when back-gate visitors call ('doorbell ringer' zombie-phone is located above Electronics lab)
• Conference room function (mainly extension 4225)
• Weather-Resistant Outdoor Phones - GAI-Tronics Titan for Rail and Commander User and Installation Guide
• Back Door phone now with Robonaut integration - IRC users informed when a delivery call is made and also when not answered.
• Toll-Free Outgoing dialing (0800 style numbers) / Banned dialing for others
• DUE TO DUMB CALLERS DIALING FOR LENNY WHEN THEY ABSOLULUTELY SHOULDN'T HAVE AND STILL COMPLAINING ABOUT IT, WE HAD TO REMOVE THE LENNY FUNCTIONALITY. RIP LENNY.
• Easy networking to other Hackspaces
• Dialing of Emergency numbers (101/111/112/999) (Please be aware that in the event of a power cut, hardware issue etc the phones will not work. Please use a mobile, or the payphone situated on High Road)

PABX System details:

• System Platform: Hosted on Bell a managed Virtual Machine running on Landin with incoming calls.
• Phones are Cisco 7970G SIP handsets running G722 and the back door phone is a surplus analogue GAI-TRONICS Titan for Rail outdoor linesman phone and GAI-Tronics Commander both attached to a single Cisco ATA186 being powered over PoE using an Avaya 1603 700415607 PoE power splitter/injector.
• OS: Linux with tftpd and httpd service enabled for phones that need to boot and load config files over tftp, LHS logo screen graphics, etc.
• PHONE SW: Asterisk 13.14.1 - no longer needing DAHDI as we've stopped using the TDM400 Digium FXO ports.
• EXTERNAL VOICE GENERATION: Voice prompt files generated using AWS Polly text to speech API.
• CONFIG NOTE: Custom configs/scripts to be shared confidentially as they contain passwords.

  /etc/asterisk         - Asterisk dialplan rules and configs
  /var/spool/asterisk   - Voicemails / CDR log storage
  /srv/tftp             - Phone firmware, ringtones, XML configs
  /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/lhs   - LHS prompts/buildscripts)

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Provisioning Notes

We should document the various provisioning files required for our collection of phones and ensure they're backed up somewhere.

To assist, I've upgraded two of the phones to the latest firmware and captured what files they requested from the TFTP server:

Cisco 7942

   CTLSEP3CCE73ACD229.tlv
   ITLSEP3CCE73ACD229.tlv
   ITLFile.tlv
   SEP3CCE73ACD229.cnf.xml
   XMLDefault.cnf.xml
   SIP42.9-4-2SR3-1S.loads
   jar42sip.9-4-2ES26.sbn
   cnu42.9-4-2ES26.sbn
   apps42.9-4-2ES26.sbn
   dsp42.9-4-2ES26.sbn

Cisco 7970

   CTLSEP00070E5706BE.tlv
   ITLSEP00070E5706BE.tlv
   ITLFile.tlv
   SEP00070E5706BE.cnf.xml
   XMLDefault.cnf.xml
   SIP70.9-4-2-1S.loads
   jar70sip.9-4-2TH1-1.sbn
   cnu70.9-4-2TH1-1.sbn
   apps70.9-4-2TH1-1.sbn
   dsp70.9-4-2TH1-1.sbn
   cvm70sip.9-4-2TH1-1.sbn

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Infrastructure needs/Future uses:

• Mini-XML applications for the phones (weather, IRC info, relevant member info)
• Enable emergency all-page public address functionality
• Connect with other Hackspaces

Kraptv commented about some possible concerns about disturbing the peace:

If people are annoyed at the phones ringing - they can press the "Do Not Disturb" button and it won't ring. In this design - I am mindful to keep a productive peace - I helped implement the phone system at a large cartoon company and was mindful to the variety of edge cases and balancing of sensitive users vs. collaborative users.

If it is completely crap and everyone hates it, we can scrap it easily and say 'man, corded phones are so 90's! Good riddance!' - but there are still many valid uses and an example of fun infrastructure enhancement. Noone is obligated to answer the phone. Noone has to touch it. It's a co-operative, not some sort of business that has a telephone response service level agreement. ;-)

And finally - use it, play with it, and hack on it to make it better!

Dial 020 3422 0547 to call the LHS phone system, please contact Marrold or email the london-hack-space-infrastructure mailing list.

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References:

• http://www.asterisk.org/
• http://www.digium.com/
• http://www.gai-tronics.org.uk
• http://www.cisco.com/