[TriLUG] VOIP soft phone help.

[Thomas Gardner]

I did look into buying actual conference room phones a bit, but the
problems I was having there were 1) primarily expense.  I can think
of at least a dozen (likely even more) places I'd want to put one.
Per unit cost is pretty important.  The ones I saw were hundreds
per unit.  2) I'm really liking the idea of wireless, as long as it's
encrypted well.  At first I was thinking wired (who wants everything
you say to your wife broadcast to the whole neighborhood?), but
the more I thought about it, the more I thought a good encrypted IP
network should do the trick, and save a lot of hassle.  I've gotten
some really good information from a friend on this list so I think
I know what to look for.  3) I think I'd have to run my own phone
switch to make that work.  Yet another thing to spend money on and yet
another thing to learn.  At least what I learn about soft phones might
be useful in other ways.  I doubt learning about phone switches would.
4) I really want it to be an automatic system.  I don't think I'd be
able to program the phones to automatically dial into a conference
call when they come up.  If that's true, then going with conference
room phones means I'd have to go around to a dozen or so phones and
put each one on speaker and dial into the conference every time our
power goes out and comes back (which happens to us a LOT).

Thanks, though.  It was a good suggestion.  Unfortunately, when I was
looking into it, I just couldn't get past all that.  If you know of a
device, however, that addresses all or even some of the concerns above,
though, by all means please speak up 'cause I missed it.

Thanks,
tg.

On 8/20/12, Jim Ray <jim at neuse.net> wrote:
> Polycom makes some great conferencing phones that have echo cancellation
> algorithms built in. I am not sure how you could look at the software ,
> though, without reverse engineering their product. You are really looking
> more at digital signal processing and may want to use fast Fourier
> transform.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 20, 2012, at 11:04 AM, "Thomas Gardner" <tmg at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> On 8/20/12, Jim Ray <jim at neuse.net> wrote:
>>> Just curious: why would two devices in same room need to communicate
>>> over Skype?
>>
>> Well, that isn't exactly the application.  What I'm trying to do
>> is have all the devices conference themselves into each other so
>> that someones voice that gets picked up on any of them will be
>> broadcast to all the others.  This is going to be a closed call.
>> All the devices will be in the same building, and won't need to
>> connect to anything in outside world.  I'm trying to get as close
>> as I can to 100% coverage of the square footage of the building,
>> so with that, I figure there's going to be some coverage overlap.
>> I was hoping someone on this list knew of some slick SW that might
>> be able to manage the resulting echo (or any of the other problems I
>> mentioned in my first post that I thought I might have to worry about).
>>
>> It may not be possible, so I may have to drop it like so many other
>> boneheaded ideas I've had over my lifetime, but I thought it was
>> worth a try.  Some guys just never learn, eh?  :-)
>>
>> L8r,
>> tg.
>> --
>> This message was sent to: Jim Ray <jim at neuse.net>
>> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from that
>> address.
>> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
>> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web    :
>> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/jim%40neuse.net
>> TriLUG FAQ          :
>> http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
> --
> This message was sent to: Thomas Gardner <tmg at pobox.com>
> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from that
> address.
> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web	:
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/tmg%40pobox.com
> TriLUG FAQ          : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
>