VOIP
VOIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) allows us to connect phones, or video phones to our mesh network. You can even connect your old touch tone phone to the mesh using a device called an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). Once connected, you can call the other VOIP phones/video phones by entering the other phone's IP address on the number pad. The Orange County mesh has an Asterisk server running on a Raspberry pi. The Asterisk server is a VOIP Public Brance Exchange (PBX) which allows us to register the VOIP phones on the mesh and assign four digit extensions, making it easier to call the other phones. In most cases, when a VOIP phone is advertised as a service, the owner of that phone and mesh node will list the IP address of the phone as well as the four digit extension number, if one has been assigned.
If you want to create your own PBX, we recommend the Asterix from FreePBX available here.
FreePBX is a web-based open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages Asterisk (PBX), an open source communication server. FreePBX is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), an open source license. FreePBX can be installed manually or as part of the pre-configured FreePBX Distro that includes the system OS, Asterisk, FreePBX GUI and assorted dependencies.
To convert a standard analog Touch-Tone phone to a VOIP phone we recommend getting an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) such as the Grandstream HT701.
Grandstream also makes a VOIP Video phone. We have also tested the ANS IRIS 3000. Both of these video phones have audio and video (RCA) aouput jacks on the back allowing you to connect them to a TV, projector or other large screen.
Another way of sending VOIP video is with the Grandstream GXV3500. This devices is both a video encoder and video decoder and can be called by or call to a VOIP video
Here is a great video in how to set up FreePBX on a Raspberry Pi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fckJpPw_p2A