Small Homebrew Pbx

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Hello all,

I’m new here and I’m interested in building a small PBX with asterisk at home. I have one single PSTN line and ethernet cabling in place. I
already have fairly decent PC that I can use (AMD FX 8350 16GB of RAM
and RAID 10 SATA disks). I make and receive 10 calls a day on average. I
want 4 IP phones connected to the ethernet network. When there is a incoming call, all phones must ring and the first that takes the call makes the others stop ringing, but lets them available for internal calls.

Given the requirements above, what’s a cheap but working PCIe card / USB
adapter I could buy for this kind of PBX? Do I need things like echo cancellation? Do I need FXS ports?

Thanks in advance, Lucio.

9 thoughts on - Small Homebrew Pbx

  • Hey Lucio,

    You will need a FXS port. I would recommend setting up something like Cisco SPA3102.

    The SPA3102 can be found cheap on Ebay, and will be easy to setup in Asterisk. http://www.infoworld.com/article/2633694/data-modeling/your-pstn-and-you–linksys-spa-3102-and-asterisk.html

    Once the FXS is set up, it’s just a matter of adding a ring group/pickup group:
    http://edoceo.com/exemplar/asterisk-call-groups

    Regards, Tim

    —- On Mon, 15 Jun 2015 16:46:13 +1000 wrote —

  • You need an FXO port for each exchange line, and an FXS port for each analogue telephone you want to connect to the PABX. (If you want to use proper hardware SIP phones, then you don’t need FXS ports.)

    You can get inexpensive PCI / PCIe cards which accept up to 4 modules, either FXO or FXS, from the usual place online. They are drop-in compatible with Digium cards. I would never use one of those in a mission-critical, production environment, but they are fine just for experimenting with.

  • I don’t know this ‘translates’ to Italy, but this is what I would advise somebody in the US to consider, assuming you have a reliable Internet connection.

    0) I hope you mean you want to run Asterisk at home instead of ‘Asterisk at Home.’ A@H was an ancient distribution from around 2005.

    1) Rent a DID (a ‘PSTN number’) from a reputable SIP provider. This eliminates the need for a PCI/USB interface and you won’t disrupt your
    ‘business’ while you figure out how to configure and test your Asterisk server.

    In the US, you can rent a DID for about $1.50 per month and about a $0.01
    per minute of ‘talk time.’ For 10 calls per day, this should beat the hell out of a ‘landline’ monthly standing fee.

    In the US, it costs less than $20.00 to ‘port’ your existing number if you are really in love with it.

    2) Ditch the ‘room warmer’ and find something really small and cheap to run. I live in San Diego and we pay $0.32 per kWh. I’d guess running your rig would cost me $50.00 to $100.00 per month just in electricity — and probably that much again in the summer for additional Air Conditioning.

    Take a look at Soekris net4801. It’s pretty old (but very reliable) and it’s CPU will limit you on what OS you can run, but it will give you an idea of how small (and cheap to power) an ‘Asterisk server’ capable of handling a couple of simultaneous calls can be.

    For a more modern server, look for something small and cheap based on something like an Atom processor. Maybe a used laptop. If the battery is still good, you’ve solved your UPS problem as well. Although, if you lose power, you’ve probably lost your Internet connection as well so you could only make calls between extensions.

    3) For the IP phones, check out ebay.com. Last year, I picked up 3 Polycom SP 501’s for $20.00 each. A little dated, but a great phone.

  • And you would lose the Italian equivalent of 911. In the US, everybody over the age of 6 has a cell phone stapled to the side of their head, so it is kind of a ‘non-issue’ 🙂

  • $0.01
    hell you your

    lose could Polycom

    I gotta agree with most all of this. Asterisk has been shown to run on a Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi 2 and will handle a few simultaneous calls. Another resource is http://www.plugpbx.org/

    For home use, I would think either would be a good low power way to run Asterisk. Unless you just really need the land line, ditch the analog line and go voip from start to finish.

  • James Cass wrote:
    The JS-200 runs a very old ( 1.4 ) version of Asterisk

    I have set up more than 30 nodes using the HP thin clients, many using the available cheap T5720 units. Install the latest AstLinux in the flash, and follow the advice for a PSTN provider. I prefer voip.ms here in the US, and they also will deliver via IAX, which I prefer as SIP has so many hacking attempts I just don’t want to deal with it. AstLinux in our private peer to peer network, along with many also having a PSTN connection, is easy to set up, easy to support remotely, and with a flash based system very reliable. also Astlinux has a built in facility for an in place upgrade. It also doesn’t have the PITA configuration of a PIAF. Standard Asterisk conf files are used The HP 5720’s also have a 120-240 volt power supply, so it should work almost worldwide Somewhat larger than a Pi, but in a decent case that could easily be mounted on a wall somewhere and connected to the LAN

    Other newer units with multiple NIC ports and AstLinux can also be your router /firewall

    Unless one is running a 100 seat call center, no need for one of those huge juice hogs anymore.

    John Novack

  • I would get hold of some lower-power hardware, that system seems hugely over-specified for what you want to do.

    A raspberry pi & a Cisco SPA-3102 would be a good solution. Cisco don’t make the 3102 any more but there are still plenty of them around. I
    believe Grandstream still make ATAs as well but I’ve never thought very highly of them. As others have said, it’s an FXO port you need.

    You want to avoid transcoding on low power hardware such as a raspberry pi so set everything for a codec such as g711a or g711u (Asterisk, the IP phones you use and the SPA3102).