Suggestions for a SOHO/Home Asterisk system

Question

I would like to buy a small embedded system that runs Linux and Asterisk. I would like two FXS ports ( to plug analogue phones into ) and one FXO port ( to plug in to my real line to allow access to the POTS ). I would like it to have a USB port to hold storage for voicemail.

I really want it for home use so I would like it to be under £150 ( say $250 ), given that you can buy ADSL routers for around this much can any of them be made to run Linux and Asterisk?

I don't want a PC as the power usage would be too high. I am looking for something like this ASDL router but open and able to run Asterisk or another open PBX. At worst I would like a box which had one FXO and two FXS and just made them completely available over IP to a full Asterisk system on a low power Atom system.

Answer 1

If you want an "out of the box" solution, VOIPTel makes a number of embedded Asterisk PBX's.

If you prefer to "roll your own", you can get a Linksys NSLU2 from E-Bay for around $75 and then install Asterisk on it. You should be able to have a big enough HD in there for voicemail.

The NSLU2 doesn't have an FXO or FXS port, so then you would need to get an unlocked Linksys SPA3000 (ebay ~$50). Then you can configure the SPA3000 as an FXO/FXS using these instructions or these instructions (further down on the page under the Sipura SPA3000 instructions).

Added:

Another "roll your own" option is to build an embedded unit from scratch. David Rowe details the process in an excellently detailed blog post. He also sells the PCB for that project on his website. The IP04 construction stories are on his site as well.

Answer 2

+1 for the Atcom/VoIPTel/RoweTel device, which runs µcLinux and Asterisk.

The smallest version, which supports up to two ports (FXS and/or FXO) is just a bit bigger than a pack of cigarettes, only uses a few watts/hour, and is totally silent since it uses 256MB of NAND memory.

I don't know of another device that is comparable in terms of features, size, and price.

Answer 3

I get the impression that a dusty old PC (even one of these) has too large a form factor, because that would certainly do the trick on your budget.

Otherwise, you're looking for a cheap, mass-produced product that doesn't really exist yet, because there's really not much of a market for home-based PBXes that are anywhere as flexible as Asterisk is.

As for Embedded Linux-compatible devices, try checking Linux-devices.com for doodads that do what you want.