The BCM50 sends SIP INFO messages for DTMF. using Asterisk’s SIPDtmfMode() application, the DTMF send mode can be forced to in-band. Since the call has been set up as G711, in-band DTMF will still be intelligible by the far end. I have tested this in our lab set-up, and it works fine, so that is issue 1 out of the way. As for issue 2, I have placed a call to a number which I know will not answer (Looks like I’m the only mug that works on a Saturday 
). The call rang out for over 2 minutes before receiving a SIP 486 (user busy) from Voiceflex, with their Asterisk server setting X-Asterisk-HangupCause as “Network out of order”. 2 minutes seems like plenty of time to be ringing to me, most likely this is limited by a max ringing timeout timer somewhere along the line, either at Voiceflex or on the PSTN.
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I have now deployed the solution mentioned in the previous post “in-the-wild”, running on an NSLU2 via unslung. A bit of tweaking was required, but the solution has been up and running for over a week now with only a couple of slight issues:
1) Sending DTMF does not work. This is possibly due to using G.729 rather than aLaw, assuming the BCM50 uses in-band DTMF. I will investigate further, as it may be that Voiceflex have my SIP trunks configured to use SIP INFO or RFC2833.
2) When calling a PSTN number from the BCM, if the call is ringing longer than a certain time, the call is disconnected. I will replicate this in the lab to determine the cause.
UPDATE:
I have a couple of updates to this – see BCM50 SIP Update 2, and Here
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I have managed to get a BCM50 Release 2 to communicate with an authenticating public SIP trunk provider (Voiceflex, in case you are wondering.) Now, neither Voiceflex, nor Nortel support this. According to our suppliers, nobody else is doing this. But, by putting Asterisk in between them (which Voiceflex seem to be using too, judging from their voice prompts), I have the BCM50 working fine on Voiceflex’s SIP trunks.
Now all I need to do is get it up and running on an NSLU2 or similar.
Watch this space to find out how it goes at a client site.
UPDATE – Voiceflex now do support this – if you are connecting from a static WAN address, they will allow connections from this IP without authentication if you request it. If you are using the BCM50 (this includes release 3), this will work for you – unless you have a dynamic WAN address, in which case the technique mentioned here is still useful.
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After converting the vdi to a vmdk, the VMware VM a) has the vmdk stuck at 2.5Gb and full instead of 10Gb, and b) does not boot. Grrraaaaaaaaaagh!
I am reinstalling the OS onto a new mdk from scratch instead, I only had XP, uVNC, and ACT! on there, I can reinstall quicker than it will be faffing around with vmware-vdiskmanager and the like.
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What a total nightmare it is trying to get VirtualBox’s host interface networking to work. The only way I can see to get it working on a windows host is by using ICS or a network bridge – both not possible on a 2003 Server. (please somebody prove me wrong.) Why can’t it be like VMWare and Just Work? Virtualbox’s user manual helpfully states “If your host is running Windows XP or newer, you can also use the built-in bridging feature to connect your host interfaces to your physical network card.” Last time I checked, Server 2003 R2 is newer than XP. Perhaps innotek did not envisage the need to run a VM on a server PC. Well, thats a morning wasted, now I am going to try to migrate the vmdk to VMWare instead. oh, joy.
EDIT: In case you need to know, you can convert VirtualBox-style VDI images to VMWare VMDK images by using qemu. the syntax is:
qemu-img convert original.vdi new.vmdk
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Its been a while since I’ve posted, so I’ve taken some time out to sort out a few aspects of my online persona. As anyone who knows me knows, I’m not a big facebook fan – it’s just not my thing. So I am going to try to make a concerted effort to use all the tools and tricks that all self-respecting up-to-the-minute geeks should be using – del.icio.us, Twitter, jabber, and my blog.
I want to start posting more articles on things like CakePHP, Asterisk, OpenSER, SIP/SIMPLE, DirectX, Linux, Astrophotography, Electronics, and all the other stuff that I do that may be interesting to some people out there of a more technical bent.
So lets hope this turning over of a new leaf on my blog lasts, and maybe someone may find it useful, who knows?!
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Congratulations to Laura and Tim, who got married on Saturday, and are know sunning it up in Jamaica for a week!
A great day was had by all, cant believe my little sis is married and has her own house. The service, reception, band, wedding car, everything were all fantastic. Hope you are both together forever, me and Sarah will come visit you soon!
x
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There seems to be precious little information out there regarding CakePHP 1.2′s RSSHelper. so here is a quick how-to:
Controller:
function rss() {
$this->layoutPath = 'rss';
$this->Appointment->recursive = 0;
$this->set('data', $this->Appointment->findAll());
$this->set('channel', array('title' => "Recent Appointments",
'link' => "/appointments/rss",
'description' => "Recently Booked Appointments" ));
}
View:
function xformRSS($data)
{
return array('title' => "New Appointment",
'link' => "/appointments/view/" . $data['Appointment']['id'],
'guid' => "/appointments/view/" . $data['Appointment']['id'],
'description' => $data['Appointment']['description'],
'pubDate' => $data['Appointment']['created']);
}
echo $rss->items($data, 'xformRSS');
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Looks like I won’t be able to see the eclipse – metcheck’s astronomy weather forecast says it will be completely overcast, 100% cloud cover, for the duration of the eclipse, across the whole country 
Plus, looks like I may not be able to image USA 193 on Saturday (See here for tracking data)- the yanks will have shot it down by then!!!!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Hey everyone, welcome to my new blog. I’ve started this to share my experiences with my new telescope, a 6″ SCT. First Light, I’ve plumped for the obvious – Saturn. Managed to get the AS-GT properly aligned for the first time tonight, it’s took a bit of practice! Did a 2-star align on Capella and Sirius, then 2 calibration stars, Procyon and Castor. Immediately did a GoTo to Mars, and bang, dead center in the eyepiece with no visible drift. Decided to do a Polar Align from the HC, with the result being my most accurate align yet, K3CCD reported drift of 2.5″ / min. (Anybody else have an AS-GT? is this good, bad, or normal?!)
Had a crack at collimating the scope, resulting in much sharper views than the first time I took the scope out. Still think I haven’t got it spot on though, I’m gonna give metaguide a go next time I think. Anyways, here is the result, here comes the science bit: Celestron C6-SGT, 900 frames at 15fps on a stock SPC900NC via a 2x barlow, captured and processed in K3CCDTools, best 181 frames stacked. Post-processing in K3CCDTools and the GIMP. The skies here in Birmingham are horrendously light polluted, and the seeing was not the best.
Last night happened to be the coldest so far this winter, at -6C! I had to call it quits at 1:30am, when my laptop screen iced over. I kept having to blast the corrector plate with a hair dryer to remove the frost, I kept thinking my collimation had gone out, until I looked at the business end of the scope to see it looked like a shop window that had gone out of business, it was almost opaque!
I got some good practice in prior to next week’s eclipse anyway. I’ve booked the day off and I’m off out into the sticks to orange-free skys. Hopefully the weather will hold out and I can improve on this, but, its a start!
Scotty
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