[Discuss] End of the line for Obi100/110

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Rich Braun wrote:
> For a couple of years, I've been using the Obihai Obi110 VoIP device
> to serve as my phone gateway.

I've owned an Obi110 since a few years ago when Ted Roche tweeted about
getting one. I have it set up as a backup line and only use it
occasionally, but a colleague also got one, and uses it as a primary line.

It's an impressively capable analog telephone adapter (ATA), especially
for only $50, with a fair bit of programmable capability, but it has
always fell a bit short of what I'd like, due to not using open source
firmware, and thus being limited to the features the manufacture feels
are worthy.

That aside, I bought the Obi110 to use as a general ATA, not exclusively
as a hardware device for getting free calls through GoogleVoice. I've
always had it configured with multiple providers, and don't consider its
usefulness all that diminished due to the loss of GV.


Dan Ritter wrote:
> You won't find anything as easy to use, but you can get almost all of 
> the functionality from Asterisk, especially with one of the wrappers 
> like PBX In A Flash (PIAF), which comes as Raspberry Pi images, 
> BeagleBone images, VM images, or installable Linux packages.

Hardware costs have come down quite a bit in the few years since the
Obi110 came out. You can create a device with a pretty powerful cell
phone SoC at the same price point.

So I've been waiting to see someone come out with a fully open
hardware/open source ATA. Perhaps this won't happen because the market
for wired phone services is just shrinking too fast. Perhaps the best we
will see are D-I-Y solutions like what Dan describes where you buy a
BeagleBone, case, power supply, load PBX In A Flash onto an SD card, and
and plug some IAX FXO (phone line) and FXS (extension) interfaces.

It'll take you some time to pull together, configure, and debug, and it
won't be doable for under $50. The bare BeagleBone alone will cost you that.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/