Twofer Tuesday: Incredible PBX for RasPBX on BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi

We never were big fans of unfinished projects. And with Festivus behind us and Christmas tomorrow, it seemed only fitting to celebrate with a Twofer Tuesday Encore. Whether you like ’em or hate ’em, Google’s free text-to-speech engine is a big deal. It’s as close to perfect as any commercial product you can buy. So getting it to work with the BeagleBone® Black was really important for those of us that believe the BeagleBone Black is a near perfect telephony platform for home users and SOHO businesses. With this week’s release of Incredible PBX™ 4.11.3 for the RasPBX™, the GoogleTTS engine finally is available in all its glory on both the Raspberry Pi® and BeagleBone Black platforms. At $45 and sporting a "Made in the USA" moniker, the BeagleBone’s only real competition is the Raspberry Pi which has roughly a third the performance for VoIP-related tasks. Finding a BeagleBone Black has not been the easiest thing to accomplish either. They have sprung up five or six times over the past two weeks only to be snarfed up in a couple of hours. We have a PIAF Forum thread that will keep you apprised of the latest sightings or just follow us on Twitter. As with the early days of the Raspberry Pi, price gouging is alive and well so we’ll leave it to you to decide what your budget can tolerate. Our recommendation is hold your nose and pay the extra $15. The BeagleBone Black is worth it!

NEWS FLASH: The all-new Incredible PBX release for Raspberry Pi 2 is now available.

There’s more Black news this week as well. PIAF-Black™ now ushers in the next generation of Asterisk® with the official release of Asterisk 12.0.0. You can download the latest 32-bit or 64-bit PIAF™ ISOs from SourceForge. Then pick your favorite flavor of Asterisk to install. It’s that easy! New torrents were released this week as well thanks to our good friend, Isaac McDonald. Torrents are available for the latest PIAF 2.0.6.5.0 ISOs as well as two virtual machine builds for PIAF-Green™ with FreePBX™ 2.11 and Incredible PBX 11. Just visit the PIAF web site to grab your favorite torrent. Merry Christmas everybody!

For long time Nerd Vittles readers, you may recall that we built the original Incredible PBX™ for Raspberry Pi® (aka Incredible Pi) using much of the development platform pioneered by Gernot Bauer of RasPBX™ fame. In the early days of Gernot’s project, we just couldn’t get the necessary pieces in place on his platform to support Incredible PBX so we temporarily forked his terrific work in order to get Incredible Pi out the door quickly. That was then, and this is now as they say. RasPBX has grown in popularity because of the untiring efforts of Gernot & Co. in continually improving the platform. And six months ago, RasPBX was ported to the BeagleBone Black. Don’t be misled by its tiny footprint. The BeagleBone Black¹ provides nearly triple the performance of a $35 Raspberry Pi for an extra $10 to $25 hardware investment depending upon where you buy the board. The rainbow case is a few cents more. 😉

Let us cut to the chase. Run, don’t walk, to buy a BeagleBone Black! It’s that good. If Amazon is sold out, here is a link to other suppliers. See also this thread on the PIAF Forum for the latest availability news. In terms of performance, we would be hard-pressed to distinguish the BeagleBone Black’s performance from an identical Asterisk® and FreePBX®-based system running on the Intel® Atom® platform. The performance boost is that dramatic. So a few weeks ago we decided to take another look at the RasPBX platforms with the goal of porting Incredible PBX in much the same way that we currently provide the add-on for PBX in a Flash™ builds. The advantage for us is that it gets us out of the hardware business and lets us concentrate on building better VoIP application software. The advantage for you is it gives you additional choices, and they’re all still free!

UPDATE: Good News and More Good News. Everything covered below works flawlessly on the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black platforms. On the Beaglebone Black hardware, everything works except GoogleTTS, and our friend, Lefteris Zafiris, will have a fix soon. GoogleTTS goes through the motions of converting text to speech, but the output is a constant high-pitched beep. For the short term, on the BeagleBone Black, we’ve substituted Flite for GoogleTTS until there is a fix. Soon with a little luck! We’ve also added an experimental IPtables Firewall WhiteList to the BeagleBone Black platform. Please read this thread on the PIAF Forum for details and keep us apprised of your progress. The complexity of the GoogleTTS fix for the BeagleBone Black made it an unsuitable candidate for the automatic update utility. Our apologies. We’ve set up a demo IVR application so you can check out the performance of Incredible PBX on the BeagleBone Black for yourself.

Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – Call by Name (say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to try it out)
2 – MeetMe Conference (password is 1234)
3 – Wolfram Alpha (say "What planes are overhead?")
4 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – Weather Forecast (say the city and state, province, or country)
7 – Today in History
8 – Speak to a Real Person (or maybe just voicemail if we’re out)

Overview of Incredible PBX for RasPBX. Let’s quickly run down the new feature set for Incredible PBX 4.11.3 on the RasPBX platform. With the demise of Google Voice less than six months away, we thought it was important to begin offering some additional choices. With this build, you’ll have a dozen preconfigured VoIP trunks from the best providers in the business to choose from. Most offer outbound calls in the U.S. and Canada for a penny or less per minute. And many offer DID trunks with unlimited inbound calls for under $5 a month. Several offer free SIP URIs, or free U.S. DIDs, or free iNum DIDs for unlimited free calling worldwide. You’ll find lots of tips and suggestions in the Providers section of the PIAF™ Forum. Once you’ve signed up with one or more providers, all you have to do is plug in your credentials and enable the desired trunks in FreePBX. It only takes a few seconds.

We also wanted to provide a robust collection of Asterisk applications that let you bring up a fully-functional, feature-rich VoIP platform in a matter of minutes. As with all Incredible PBX builds, this release activates the Flite text-to-speech engine as well as Google’s TTS and STT interfaces. The Baker’s Dozen VoIP applications we’ve chosen for this initial release include free CallerID Name lookups for incoming calls, Voice Dialing with speech-to-text (STT) capability as well as Speed Dials, Yahoo News and Weather reports with text-to-speech (TTS) translation of the Yahoo news feeds, Weather Reports by ZIP code from the National Weather Service, MeetMe conferencing by simply dialing an extension, Telephone Reminders and Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (both accessible by phone or via FreePBX GUI), Today in History, SMS messaging, Wolfram Alpha, and our versatile AsteriDex contacts database. We’ve also integrated the Incredible PBX automatic update service into the RasPBX build. Just log into your server once in a while, and the rest is automagic. You also get email delivery of voicemails in MP3 format so that you can play back your messages with almost any email client. Finally, there’s a new status application to tell you everything you want to know about your RasPBX server in a single screen.

Getting Started. Incredible PBX for RasPBX is basically a scripted installer. It assumes you already have a functioning RasPBX device. The only gotcha is your RasPBX system needs to be freshly created with no customization. This is important because, as part of the installation procedure, Incredible PBX loads a 15MB image snapshot that overwrites all of your Asterisk, FreePBX, and MySQL configurations. If you have previously customized your setup or added features such as faxing, those will get wiped out during the Incredible PBX installation process. Bottom Line: Start by creating a new RasPBX SD image for use with Incredible PBX. Boot RasPBX and log in as root. Download and run the Incredible PBX installer. Once the Incredible PBX install is complete, customize your new system as desired. While nothing is 100% bullet-proof, we’ve taken pains to design Incredible PBX in such a way that it can coexist with future updates to RasPBX deployed through the raspbx-upgrade utility. And Incredible PBX has its own update utility, update-my-raspbx, which is run automatically when you log into your server as root. Finally, we are confident that this new Incredible PBX release is stable; however, it is version 1.0 software and should be treated as such at least through the end of 2013. Please report any bugs you discover on the PIAF Forum, and we will attempt to provide timely fixes.

Installing Incredible PBX. As noted, we’re assuming you already have created a fresh SD card with your RasPBX image. If not, start with the first four steps only of the excellent tutorials for the Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black. Next, boot your system from the SD card and log in with username root and password raspberry or beaglebone depending upon your hardware platform. Be sure you have a working Internet connection for your hardware. Then proceed with the Incredible PBX installation procedure below:

cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11-raspbx.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11-raspbx.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11-raspbx
./incrediblepbx11-raspbx


Hang around for the first couple minutes of the install. You’ll be prompted to type a Y as part of the raspbx-upgrade procedure. Once you get past that prompt, you can go have a cup of coffee while the installation procedure continues. It takes about 15-30 minutes to complete depending upon the speed of your Internet connection. Once the base install finishes, the update-passwords script will be launched. It’s imperative that you reset all of your passwords with very secure passwords immediately. This includes the root password, the FreePBX and ARI admin passwords, the extension 701 password, the extension 701 voicemail password, the email delivery address for extension 701, and the telephone reminders password for scheduling reminders by phone. Just fill in the blanks, and the script will do the heavy lifting.

Asterisk Security. Once the Incredible PBX install completes, what you still have is an Incredibly Insecure PBX. Unless you’ve already done so, make certain that Incredible PBX is repositioned behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure! This is very important. Neither Asterisk nor FreePBX was designed for direct exposure to the Internet. Before you do anything else, read our Primer on Asterisk Security. Remember, it’s your phone bill.

UPDATE: Travelin’ Man 3 Now Implemented. Beginning with Incredible PBX 4.11.3, IPtables WhiteList security was added to the RasPBX BeagleBone Black platform. And version 4.11.4 released on 1-4-14 added it to the Raspberry Pi edition of RasPBX as well. For the nuts and bolts of how the IPtables firewall and WhiteLists work, read the Travelin’ Man 3 tutorial. Do NOT install the application! It’s already there. We still recommend that you always run your server behind a hardware-based firewall. Travelin’ Man 3 just adds an extra layer of protection. Think of it as a second condom without the pain. 😉

As initially configured, IPtables is set up to allow all incoming and outgoing traffic. It will display as DN in the status display. You have a couple of options. If you only want to allow incoming traffic from phones and users on your private LAN while permitting registered SIP and IAX trunk connections from anywhere, then log into your server as root and execute this command:

cp /root/iptables.lanonly /etc/network/iptables

If you want to further lock down your server and manage all external connections from outside your LAN, run: /root/secure-iptables. As configured, IPtables never blocks internal LAN traffic. By running secure-iptables, you get to set one "safe" external IP address for access to your server in addition to automatically configuring the safe IP addresses of a dozen SIP providers. You then can add additional IP addresses to your WhiteList by running /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn. You can delete providers with /root/del-acct. Check the status of your IPtables setup at any time with this command: iptables-status. Restart/reload IPtables settings using only this command: iptables-restart. If you use the traditional IPtables reload procedure, you will permanently erase any fully-qualified domain names in your IPtables configuration and convert them (permanently) to IP addresses. Don’t do it! Always use iptables-restart. Never erase files in /root with the .iptables extension. This is how Travelin’ Man 3 keeps track of your WhiteList entries so that you can delete as desired. For further details, read the Travelin’ Man 3 article.

Overclocking the Raspberry Pi. On the Raspberry Pi platform only, to enable overclocking at your own risk, run: raspi-config. Overclocking works for us. YMMV! The key is a good power supply. Even though the kernel now monitors CPU temperature and manages overclocking, it’s always nice to see for yourself. To monitor the CPU temperature, just run the status program which provides a current snapshot anytime.

Resizing an SD Card. On both the BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi platforms, you can resize (expand) the default partition to accommodate a larger SD card. On the Raspberry Pi, the default partition is 4GB. On the BeagleBone Black, it’s only 2GB. To resize the partition to make use of a larger SD card on a Raspberry Pi, choose the resize option after running raspi-config. Then reboot. The BeagleBone Black is a different beast. While we don’t recommend it, you can actually run Incredible PBX using the internal 2GB eMMC memory board rather than an external Micro SD card. Gernot’s documentation will walk you through how to do it. While it is screaming fast compared to an SD card, you’ll only have 371MB of breathing room so it means constant monitoring of your log files and minimal use of functions that consume disk space. Or you could create a cron job to run daily and use a script like ours:
#!/bin/bash
cd /var/log/asterisk
touch empty.log
chmod 664 empty.log
chown asterisk:asterisk empty.log
cp empty.log freepbx_dbug
cp empty.log freepbx_debug
cp empty.log freepbx.log
cp empty.log full
cd ..
rm *.0*
rm *.1*
rm /tmp/ggl*


We much prefer at least an 8GB Type 4 SD card for Incredible PBX. On the BeagleBone Black, we’ve added the resize-partition script in the /root folder. Just run it after booting from your Micro SD card.

Setting Up Google Voice. If you want free calling in the U.S. and Canada for the next five months, then you’ll need a Google Voice account, and you’ll need one dedicated to Incredible PBX, or it won’t work. Log out after setting up the new Google Voice account! Also note that Google Voice will cease to function on May 15, 2014. Read all about it here.

• Register for Google Voice account (no funky characters in your password!)
• Enable Google Chat as Phone Destination
• Configure Google Voice Calls Settings:
• Call Screening – OFF
• Call Presentation – OFF
• Caller ID (In) – Display Caller’s Number
• Caller ID (Out) – Don’t Change Anything
• Do Not Disturb – OFF
• Call Options (Enable Recording) – OFF
• Global Spam Filtering – ON
• Place test call in and out using GMail Call Phone

Accessing Incredible PBX By GUI. You don’t have to be a Linux guru to use Incredible PBX. In fact, we’re just about finished with the Linux command prompt, but stay logged in until we finish a few more steps below. Most of your configuration of Incredible PBX will be performed using the FreePBX Web GUI.

If you’re new to Asterisk and FreePBX, here’s the one paragraph primer on what needs to happen before you can make free calls with Google Voice. You’ll obviously need a free Google Voice account. This gets you a phone number for people to call you and a vehicle to place calls to plain old telephones throughout the U.S. and Canada at no cost. You’ll also need a softphone or SIP phone to actually place and receive calls. YATE makes a free softphone for PCs, Macs, and Linux machines so download your favorite and install it on your desktop. Phones connect to extensions in FreePBX to work with Incredible PBX. Extensions talk to trunks (like Google Voice) to make and receive calls. FreePBX uses outbound routes to direct outgoing calls from extensions to trunks, and FreePBX uses inbound routes to route incoming calls from trunks to extensions to make your phones ring. In a nutshell, that’s how a PBX works. There are lots of bells and whistles that you can explore down the road.

Let’s get started. Using a browser, enter the IP address of your server or just use http://raspbx.local as the address. Choose FreePBX Administration. When prompted for a username and password, use admin for the username and whatever FreePBX password you set up when you initially configured your server above. If you ever forget your credentials, just run /root/update-passwords again to reset them.

Changing FreePBX admin Password and Default Email. From the main FreePBX GUI, click Admin => Administrators. Click on admin user in the far-right column. Enter a new Password and click Submit Changes button. We did this in update-passwords, but now you’ll know how to do it from with the FreePBX GUI as well. Click Apply Config button. Be sure to set your default email address in the right margin of Admin -> Module Admin and save your entry. By doing this, you’ll get periodic notices of FreePBX updates. It’s a good idea to stay current with these. They are generally well tested before release.

Activating a Google Voice Trunk. To create a Trunk in FreePBX to handle calls to and from Google Voice, you’ll need three pieces of information from the Google Voice account you set up above: the 10-digit Google Voice phone number, your Google Voice account name, and your Google Voice password. Choose Connectivity -> Google Voice (Motif) from the FreePBX GUI. The following form will appear:

Fill in the blanks with your information and check only the top 2 boxes. If your Google Voice account name ends in @gmail.com, leave that out. Otherwise, include the full email address. Then click Submit Changes and Apply Config.

There’s one more step or your Google Voice account won’t work reliably with Incredible PBX! From the Linux command prompt while logged into your server as root, restart Asterisk: amportal restart

Setting a Destination for Incoming Calls. Now that you’ve created your Google Voice Trunk, we need to tell FreePBX how to process inbound calls when someone dials your Google Voice number. There are any number of choices. You could simply ring an extension such as 700 which we’ve already set up for you. Or you could ring multiple extensions by first creating a Ring Group which is just a list of extension numbers. Or you could direct incoming calls to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

By default, Incredible PBX is configured to route all incoming calls to extension 701. You can change this whenever you like by choosing Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Default. In the Set Destination section of the form, change the target to your desired destination for the incoming calls. Then click Submit and Apply Config.

Changing Extension Passwords. From the main FreePBX GUI, choose Applications -> Extensions. Then click on 701 in the Extension List on the right side of your display. You’ll see a form that looks like this:

We’ve already made these changes using update-passwords, but here’s how to do it in the FreePBX GUI. The extension secret needs to be a combination of letters and numbers. The Voicemail Password needs to be all numbers, preferably six or more. Replace the existing passwords with your own (very secure) entries. You also need to lock down this extension so that it is only accessible from devices on your private LAN. You do that with the deny and permit entries which currently are filled with zeroes. Leave the deny entry the way it is which tells Incredible PBX to block everybody except those allowed in the permit entry below. For the permit, we need the first three octets of your private LAN address, e.g. if your LAN is 192.168.0.something then the permit entry will be 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0.

Finally, you need to insert your actual email address in the Voicemail section so that voicemails can be delivered to you when someone leaves a message. You can also include a pager email address if you want a text message alert with incoming voicemails. If you want the voicemails to automatically be deleted from the server after they are emailed to you (a good idea considering the disk storage limitations of an SDHC card), change the Delete Voicemail option from No to Yes. That’s it. Now save your settings by clicking the Submit button. Then reload the dialplan by clicking on the red prompt when it appears.

In case you’re curious, unless you’ve chosen to automatically delete voicemails after emailing them, you can retrieve your voicemails for extension 701 by dialing *98701 from any extension on your phone system. You’ll be prompted to enter the voicemail password you set up. And you can leave a voicemail for someone by dialing their extension number preceded by an asterisk, e.g. *701 would let someone leave you a voicemail without actually calling you.

Eliminating Audio and DTMF Problems. You can avoid one-way audio on calls and touchtones that don’t work with these simple settings in FreePBX: Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings. Just plug in your public IP address and your private IP subnet. Then set ULAW as the only Audio Codec.

Setting Up a Desktop Softphone. Incredible PBX supports all kinds of telephones, but we’ll start with the easy (free) one today. You can move on to "real phones" once you’re smitten with the VoIP bug. For today, you’ll need to download a softphone to your desktop PC or Mac.

As we mentioned, the easiest way to get started with Incredible PBX is to set up a YATE softphone on your Desktop computer. Versions are available at no cost for Macs, PCs, and Linux machines. Just download the appropriate one and install it from this link. Once installed, it’s a simple matter to plug in your extension 701 credentials and start making calls. Run the application and choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of Incredible PBX, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place your first call. It’s that easy!

Incredible Trunks. When you’re ready to try some other SIP providers, we’ve done the hard work for you by providing the setups for a dozen terrific providers. All you have to do is sign up for service on their sites, enable the desired Trunks in FreePBX, and plug in your credentials. Here is a quick Cheat Sheet courtesy of Kristian Hare, who translated the Incredible PBX setups into a spreadsheet. Just click on the image below to open it in a new window. Then click on the redisplayed image to enlarge it.

Adding WiFi Support. This is covered on Gernot’s web site, but we’ll address it just for ease of reference. The most important detail is don’t get creative with your choice of USB WiFi adapters. The Edimax EW-7811Un works so use it. It’s about $10 from Amazon with free 2-day Prime shipping. Next, edit /etc/network/interfaces and add the following lines using the name of your WiFi network as well as your password "in quotes":

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid your-ssid-here-no-quotes
wpa-psk "your-passphrase-here-with-quotes"


Next, reboot your server and login as root. Your USB WiFi adapter should be lit. Running ifconfig should display an IP address for wlan0. ifdown eth0 will shut down your wired connection. Then restart Asterisk to switch to WiFi: amportal restart.

Shutting Down Your Server. Last but not least, never just pull the plug when you want to shut down your server, or you may end up with corrupted MySQL databases. Then nothing will run. Instead, log into your server as root, and issue the following commands: amportal stop and then shutdown -h now.

The Incredible PBX 4.11.3 Software Collection

Now for the fun stuff. For most folks getting started with Asterisk and FreePBX, the steepest learning curve is moving from a functioning system to one that can actually do cool stuff. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text applications and IVRs and call management and conferencing and click to dial and SMS messaging and faxing are what separate the men from the boys on the Asterisk playing field. And that’s where Incredible PBX really shines. You don’t have to do anything but choose the apps you want to deploy for yourself or your users. Everything is already in place. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t consume any computing resources. So it’s not like the bloatware of decades ago that was always sitting in memory wasting your computing cycles. Here’s a quick thumbnail on each of the applications that’s included in Incredible PBX for RasPBX. You can include almost all of these applications in your IVRs so that callers can make a selection from a list of menu choices. We’ve included the appropriate FreePBX links below. On many of the apps, we’ve also included links to Nerd Vittles or PIAF Forum tutorials for more detailed documentation when you need it.

News Headlines from Yahoo

How It Works. Dial 951. Listen to latest news headlines from Yahoo.

Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Google TTS.

Setup Required: None

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> News Headlines

Worldwide Weather Forecasts by City from Yahoo

How It Works. Dial 949. Say the name of a city and state/country for weather report desired. Press #. Listen.

Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Google STT for query and Google TTS for playback.

Setup Required: None

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by City

Worldwide Weather Forecasts by City from Weather Underground

How It Works. Dial 949. Say the name of a city and state/country for weather report desired. Press #. Listen.

Prerequisites: Requires free Weather Underground API key. Uses preconfigured Google STT for query and Google TTS for playback.

Setup Required: Obtain free Weather Underground API key. In /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin, insert your API key in $apikey of nv-weather-underground.php. Copy nv-weather-underground.php to nv-weather-google.php. Replaces Yahoo Weather by City and provides best available free weather reports.

Limitations. Free account supports up to 10 calls per minute and up to 500 calls per day.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by City

U.S. Weather Forecasts by ZIP Code from National Weather Service

How It Works. Dial 947 (Z-I-P). Enter 5-digit ZIP code for weather report desired. Listen.

Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Flite TTS to deliver weather report.

Setup Required: None

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by ZIP

Today in History from HistoryOrb.com

How It Works. Dial 86329 (T-O-D-A-Y). Listen to today’s important events in history.

Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Flite and Google TTS to deliver report.

Setup Required: None

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Today in History

Schedule Reminders by Phone and Web

How It Works. Dial 123. Enter password. Schedule a reminder or recurring reminder.

Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> Reminders to schedule, review, or delete existing reminders.

Prerequisites: Requires configuration of password with /root/update-passwords.

Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial available here.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Reminders

Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls

How It Works. Dial *68. Schedule a wakeup call just like in the hotel.

Web Interface. FreePBX -> Applications -> Wake Up Calls to schedule and configure wakeup calls.

Prerequisites: None.

Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial available here.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Wakeup Calls

Time of Day

How It Works. Dial *61. Check the time just like in the Ma Bell era.

Prerequisites: None.

Setup Required: None.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Time of Day

AsteriDex Phone Book and RoboDialer

How It Works. Open AsteriDex. Populate entries. Set click-to-dial extension. Click on person/company to call. Answer ringing call on your designated click-to-dial extension. Wait for called party to be connected.

Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.

Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call.

Setup Required: Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here. Import Google Contacts. Import Outlook Contacts. Import from Exchange Server. Import Mac Address Book or CSV Contacts.

AsteriDex Voice Dialer

How It Works. Dial 411. Say the name of person or company to call. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.

Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.

Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call. Uses Google STT.

Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Voice Dialer

AsteriDex Speed Dialing Duo

How It Works. Dial 412. Enter Speed Dial code of person/company. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.

Alternative. Dial 000 + Speed Dial code. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.

Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.

Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call. Include a DialCode for speed dial.

Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Call by Code

SMS Dictator

How It Works. Dial 767 (S-M-S). Say either the name of an AsteriDex entry or enter an SMS phone number to call. Dictate a message to be sent via Google SMS. Your message is converted to text and delivered via Google SMS.

Prerequisites: Requires Google Voice account and SMS Dictator setup. Uses preconfigured Google STT.

Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Google Voice account that can be dedicated to Incredible PBX use. Run install-smsdictator.sh in /root to configure SMS Dictator with your credentials. Complete documentation available here. May cease to function on May 15, 2014.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> SMS Dictator

SMS Message Blasting

How It Works. Run the smsblast script in /root to deliver an SMS text message stored in smsmsg.txt to all of the SMS recipients configured in smslist.txt.

Prerequisites: Requires Google Voice account and SMS Blaster setup.

Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Google Voice account that can be dedicated to Incredible PBX use. Untar smsblast.tgz in /root: tar zxvf smsblast.tgz. Edit smsblast and insert your Google Voice credentials. Edit smsmsg.txt and type your SMS message to be sent. Edit smslist.txt and prepare your SMS message recipient list. Then run smsblast to deliver your messages. May cease to function on May 15, 2014.

Wolfram Alpha

How It Works. Dial 4747. Say your query for Wolfram Alpha. Examples here. Listen to results.

Prerequisites: Requires free Wolfram Alpha account and setup. Uses preconfigured Google STT and Flite.

Limitations: Free account restricted to 2,000 queries per month.

Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Wolfram Alpha account and obtain AppID. Then configure Wolfram Alpha with your credentials by running install-wolframalpha.sh in /root. Complete documentation available here.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Wolfram Alpha

MeetMe Conferencing

How It Works. Dial 2663 (C-O-N-F). Enter user or admin PIN for conference room. Participate in conference call.

Prerequisites: None.

Setup Required: Configure your participant and admin PINs: FreePBX -> Applications -> Conferences -> 2663

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Conferences -> 2663

Telemarketers and Old Girl Friends: Meet Lenny

How It Works. Dial 53669 (L-E-N-N-Y). An entertaining solution for SPAM calls. Also configured as destination for callers on your BlackList.

Prerequisites: None. Read all about Lenny here.

Setup Required: Add 10-digit numbers of spammers to Admin -> Blacklist or dial *32 to BlackList your last caller.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Extension -> 53669

HylaFax/AvantFax Fax Server

How It Works. Dial 329 (F-A-X). Faxing already is available as a module in RasPBX. You can send faxes to Incredible PBX using almost any SIP or Google Voice DID that you’ve dedicated to faxing.

Prerequisites: Read the Fax Gateway tutorial on Gernot’s web site.

Setup Required: After installing Incredible PBX, run the install-fax script to set up the HylaFax/AvantFax servers. When prompted whether to add an extension, type Y. We recommend 329 for the extension number. It spells F-A-X and makes it easy for everyone to remember the dedicated fax extension on your system. Specify an email address for delivery of the incoming faxes. Switch to FreePBX and add an Incoming Route for the DID that you’ve dedicated to incoming faxes. Specify 329 as the destination. To add additional fax numbers with additional email destinations, run add-fax-extension.

IVR/Dialplan Integration: Extension -> 329

Bluetooth Proximity Detection

Finally, if you really want to impress your friends, buy yourself a cheap Bluetooth adapter and set up a Proximity Detection System that will forward your Asterisk calls to your cellphone when you’re away from your desk. This Nerd Vittles article will walk you through the quick setup process. Before you begin, just install bluez on your Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black: apt-get install bluez.

A Word About Flite TTS

We’ve included FLITE as the generic text-to-speech engine for Asterisk. The quality of Google TTS is much better, but we never know how long Google apps will continue to function. Because FLITE is actually integrated into Asterisk, it is susceptible to breakage if a RasPBX upgrade installs a new release of Asterisk. If this happens, you’ll know when FLITE goes silent. You can also run the following command from the Linux command prompt to check it. If you don’t get a page of FLITE information, it’s broken. 🙂

asterisk -rx "core show application like flite"

Don’t fret if FLITE breaks. Here’s how to fix it:

cd /usr/src/flite
make clean
make
make install
amportal restart


A Word About MySQL

To eliminate the need to maintain separate versions of Incredible PBX for RasPBX on the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black platforms, we’ve changed the MySQL password on both platforms to raspberry. Originally, beaglebone was the assigned password on the BeagleBone Black RasPBX implementation.

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Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of ordinary users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for a courteous response.

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Originally published: Tuesday, December 10, 2013    Updated: Tuesday, December 24, 2013

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Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

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Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

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Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

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