PBX In A Flash Scripts

Well I thought I might add a sort of developers diary so the community can get a feel for what is going on. Yes that is me to the right a "number of years ago"! Time flies these days with PIAF having been out less than 3 months and there is still much to be done. I have been wrestling with adding hylafax, iaxmodem, and avantfax to an automated install script.

I have finished the hylafax/iaxmodem component and it now works flawlessly under PIAF. I am still rewriting the avantfax install as it is quite problematic but I am hopeful it should not take too much longer and then it is out to beta test.

I released last weekend the update-source16.x program at the urging of a few of you. I must say that Asterisk 1.6.beta certainly is beta! However I have managed to put up a test system and put it through the paces so far it all seems to work. The only problem is that zaptel is still the 1.4 stream so it may take a little while to get that out the door. Please note that there is still NO SUPPORT for this product as I have other things to do right now.

I am gradually obtaining sample phones so I can continue my work on the endpoint manager for PIAF. That being said I can always use more I am trying to get one phone for each model/type that you all want support for. Currently I have the Grandstream line, and one polycom and one aastra phone. (There model types elude me at the moment but I will add a wish list page shortly). I have had some promises of Cisco hardware and hope to see them soon. I also would like some LinkSys Spa series phones. Just a note these will be permanent donations as sometimes accidents happen and equipment gets hosed!

Music on Hold using MP3 format seems to be a very hot topic. Support for MP3 files in the 1.4 tree seems to be having a few problems. I believe it is related to some of the "other" guys disabling support as the hooks are still there in the Asterisk-addons menuconfig. See what happens when you let some faceless company do all of the compilation for Asterisk. If you are running PIAF your support is turned on by default, but your are missing a couple of critical files that need to be downloaded and installed. Once this occurs you can delete all of the "@^$^%" crappy music that comes with PIAF and load up your own MP3's (remembering of course that use of copyrighted material in the United States, without a license, means a trip to Guantanamo Bay..... at least that is what the software police tell me and they are everywhere). If you want more information just look on our helpful forums site. Of course if you are running "some other distro" this may not work for you unless you compile your own asterisk-addons.

I am looking forward to the Open Telephony Training Seminar in Charleston, SC in February. All of the PIAF developers will be on hand to help out and meet all of the participants. I will be driving up the day before from Florida and staying and extra day or so. One other thing is any of the participants are welcome to stay an extra day and go diving with me. I am a PADI Open Water Instructor and can teach many specialties. So if you want to dive please let me know. For conference participants I am waving the instructor fees for any course they want to take on the weekend thus it is just the PADI fee and any cost for material and travel. Let me know!

Well back to code slogging!

Tom