Somethings I'd like to do


  

Somethings I'd like to do

This page is one of them :-)

Quickly they include building

  • Portable MP3/OGG (vorbis) player (portable not necessarily handheld)
  • Home Entertainment Media Player
    • Divx (Xvid, ffmpeg), OGG, MP3, MPEG1/2 (VCD,SVCD,DVD?)
    • Multiroom
    • Controlled by VNC, Web, SSH/Telnet, normal IR remote controls and Custom, microprocessor powered, LCD screened remote controls
    • Running Linux :-)
  • Asterisk Powered PABX
  • Neighbourhood Network
  • Portable Media Player (A laptop would probably be the easiest option)
  • Research into LDAP functional Linux server
  • Nice big Linux server with fanless computer in my room

Unfortunately I do not have the income to do any of these things at the moment. But that does not stop me researching and thinking and dreaming :-).

Home Entertainment Media Player

There are a number of projects already for this sort of thing. One I've looked a bit into is Freevo. At the moment the best thing for me to do seems to be to get my hands on an old Matrox G400 (with Dual head) before they disappear. Then get myself a fast computer with really quiet harddrive(s), cooling etc. Then look into what projects are out there, whether they suit what I'm wanting, or if I can make my own, possibly with bits of others.

Asterisk Powered PABX

Asterisk is an open source (GPLed) PBX. It supports, to varying degrees, VoIP protocols like SIP, H323, MGCP along with it's own IAX aswell as interfaces into the good old PSTN (E1, T1, PRI, BRI, POTS) with cards that the main supporter (Digium) sells aswell as isdn4linux and CAPI (under Linux) compatiable ISDN cards. FXS (to phoneS) is more difficult at the moment. VoIP phones and FXS boxes (like the Cisco ATA186) can be used but are rather expensive. At the higher end (number of) the easiest is a T1 card and a channel bank, but that is rather expensive just for a few phones. Apparently Digium is just about to release an upto 4 port FXS card which will fill in the gap between channel bank and couple of phones. For features it supports from the simple to the complicated and neat like making calls, call routing logic (can be simple to complicated), 3 way calling, call waiting, voicemail, IVR, call detail recording (CSV, MySQL, or write your own output module), callerID, voicemail (unlimited number of mailboxes, with ability to email messages) and AGI which allows dialing an extension to spawn a program (written in whatever language you like, it talks to Asterisk via stdin and stdout) that can tell Asterisk to playback and record messages, receive DTMF codes, transfer the caller to another extension etc. For more information see the website

This is looking very interesting and promising. My sister lives in Dunedin, it would be quite neat to have a phone in her room in her flat that is connected to the PBX here, so we could ring her over the Net just by picking up any phone at home here and dialing her extension. She could do the same from her end, even make phone calls out to the PSTN as if she was at home (all be it with the latancy that ADSL adds in, which is more than nice cable). Along with an IVR system to make a slightly more reliable answering machine with menus than what I have now (higher quality too). I think I would look into getting ISDN for this. Then have 3 phone numbers. Assuming it would be like the setup that Telecom installed at Hillmorton, I'd plug the modem that has Hylafax running on it into one of the FXS ports on the box (set to current fax number) and the current PBX (set to current number) into the other. I could then use the 3rd number (a new one) for the new PBX's number for testing and stuff. Afterwards when the Asterisk PBX is all up and running I'd switch it's main number to our current phone number and use the new number for dialing into the PBX for access to voicemail, dialing directly into different extensions (my sister's for example) or boucing calls off the box etc

Update (2004-09-06): I've got myself a Sipura 2000 (from Voxilla Store), a X100P clone (from Digitnetworks), and a little mini-itx computer all setup with Asterisk. I've got extensions, Music on Hold, VoIP to Voicepulse connect, FWD, Firefly (81314134), Freshtel and another Asterisk box in Dunedin with a Quicknet Phonenet card in it, voicemail, call logging etc. At the moment it's really only used as an answering machine, all be it a rather fancy one with SMS notification and messages forwarded via email. Might get a bit more use when I get a Sipura 3000 and Virbiage finally come out with their FT201 VoIP phone.

Research into LDAP functional Linux server

I'd like to try/play around with setting up a Linux server that uses LDAP for the user database for Samba and eMail servers with web based interfaces for simple admin tasks (adding/deleting users for example).

For Samba, I'd like

  • Encrypted password support
  • User/Group Policies
  • Roaming Profiles
  • Login scripts
  • Home directories (or course)
  • Printer drivers installable automatically from server
  • etc...

Nice big Linux server with fanless computer in my room

At the moment the Linux machine Giles is in my bedroom. It has two hard drives, is the network server and Internet gateway (see here for more details), hence it is rather noisy for a bedroom environment. What I would like to do is have a bigish server somewhere other than my bedroom and have just a small fanless, even harddrive-less computer in my room instead of the current setup. For most purposes the new computer in my room would just be a dumb terminal, but I was thinking on using something like an OpenBrick or a VIA mini-itx in which case it would have enough resources to be used for other stuff locally aswell. For instance playing OGG's and MP3's, or being an Internet gateway still (since my bedroom is where the socket for the cable modem is).

This page last updated Mon Sep 6 18:51:58 2004