Introducing The Idolizer: Free Asterisk AutoDialer for American Idol® Addicts

After a fun day of packing boxes for the Big Move, there's nothing quite as mind numbing as an hour of the FOX TV® network's American Idol® and 50 of your favorite commercials. The Little Mrs. doesn't mind the one hour break in production. It's the two additional hours voting for Kelly Pickler that drives her up the wall. She really can sang. Honest, honey! Enter, The Idolizer. Today's Asterisk® project is for those that have better things to do than dialing a tollfree number for two hours every Tuesday evening. And, no, the show's producers don't like autodialers. Too damn bad! We don't like commercials (especially ten at a time), but they're still showing those. Here's the deal. Cut out the commercials, and we'll turn off our autodialer. And I'll bet DialIdol.com will, too. And, no, we're not affiliated with the Fair and Balanced® network nor the American Idol® show. We just don't wanna waste two hours dialing the same phone number over and over ... when we could be packing boxes and making the Little Mrs. happy.

Prerequisites. To use The Idolizer autodialer with Asterisk, you'll need a free Asterisk@Home PBX or at least a copy of the VMware version of Asterisk@Home that runs in a Window on your Windows XP desktop. This works on versions of Asterisk@Home at least as far back as 1.5. Our tutorials will get you up and running in under an hour. Then you'll need an account with a hosting provider that gives you free calls to toll-free numbers or unlimited outbound calling in the U.S.

Installation. Using the Asterisk Management Portal (AMP) or freePBX, choose Maintenance->Config Edit->extensions_custom.conf and add the following custom context to the bottom of the file:

[custom-idolizer]
exten => s,1,SetGlobalVar(COUNTER=1)
exten => s,2,Answer
exten => s,3,Wait(2)
exten => s,4,Dial(sip/8664365701@telasip-gw|18|L(10000:2000:5000)) ; 18 for TelaSIP, 22 for FWD
;exten => s,4,Dial(iax2/*18664365701@fwd|22|L(10000:2000:5000)) ; 18 for TelaSIP, 22 for FWD
exten => s,5,Goto(h,1)
exten => s,105,NoOp(BUSY)
exten => s,106,Goto(h,1)
exten => h,1,SetGlobalVar(COUNTER=$[${COUNTER} + 1])
exten => h,2,NoOp(Counter: ${COUNTER})
exten => h,3,Wait(6)
exten => h,4,GotoIf($["${COUNTER}" < "999"]?s,2) exten => h,5,Hangup

Once you know the phone number of the contestant you wish to vote for, make the following adjustments to the code above:

Now move to the top of the file and insert the following code in the [from-internal-custom] context using an available extension number on your system (default=1234):

exten => 1234,1,Goto(custom-idolizer,s,1)

Click the Update button to save your changes, and then reload Asterisk: Setup->Incoming Calls->Submit Changes->Red Bar.

Tweaking the Settings. If you find that your calls aren't being completed or that your votes aren't being registered (i.e. the call disconnects before you are thanked for voting), it's easy to fine tune the script. The number 18 in s,4 tells the dialer how many seconds to wait for an answer when placing calls. The number 10000 in s,4 (in thousandths of a second) tells Asterisk how long to stay connected once a call is answered. And the number 6 in h,3 tells Asterisk how many seconds to wait between placing calls.

Using the AutoDialer. When you're ready to begin your dialing spree, pick up an extension on your system and dial the extension number you assigned to The Idolizer (default=1234). Put the receiver down (don't hang up!) and enjoy the rest of your evening while The Idolizer does the dialing for you. When you're ready to stop voting, hang up the phone. If you'd like to follow the progress of your calls, fire up the Command Line Interface (CLI) on your Asterisk system (asterisk -r) and enjoy the show!

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