[KLUG Members] Voice Mail Systems

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>I'm interested in setting up a voice mail system at my home.  I've done
>some reading up on it (to little avail) and basically I'm solicoting
>opinions. I would prefer some sort of GUI based system for Linux, barring
>that I have a Windows Kiosk box I could install the software on if need
>be.  I'm also looking for recommendations on hardware, again something
>with Linux drivers would be prefered.
>Feel free to pass links but I'm very interested in your opinions.

I've thought about doing this,  but my old "black box" voice mail system
just keeps kickin'  (a Mr. Friday if anyone has had the
fortune/misfortune of owning one).

>From my poking about you have 2.5 options depending on how far you want
to go and the $$$ you want to invest.

Option #1) a vgetty (voice getty) based solution.

http://voxpak.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bluelvm/
http://vocp.sourceforge.net/

The last one looks most promising.  There are many of these floating
around in various stages of evolution (or devolution).
You need to make sure you have a vgetty supported modem,  the USR
Sportster seems to be popular.

Option #2 & #2.5) Asterisk, the open source PBX.

http://www.asteriskpbx.com/main/index.html

It turns an Intel PC into a PBX,   with extenstion, call forwarding,
voice mail, etc...  Only problem is hardware support.  The low end
option is a Quicknet Linejack card (~$180) for a single line and a OSS
supported sound card.  Additions Linejack and Quickjack cards can add
more extenstions/lines up to the limit of your PCs back place. That is
options 2.  If you need lots of connectivity you can get a Tormenta card
(http://www.asteriskpbx.com/tormenta) and use it's T1 jack to interface
with a telephony channel bank and have a total of 24 extensions + lines
of various kinds (analog, ISDN, etc...)  It also supports IP client
extensions via gnophone.  There is talk of a Winmodem channel,  but no
progress has been made as far as I can tell in quite some time.  That is
what I am waiting for.  Overall developement seems rather herky-jerky.

Let us know if you try any of these.