[sudo-discuss] there is now a payphone outside Omni

tonight Robb and I bolted a payphone to the outside of The Omni, next to the front door (on the right). There is no coin box or cover, and the coin slot is filled solid with hot glue. it's wired to a VOIP box inside with the door opener computer. There is an asterisk server in sudoroom made entirely by Robb, which provides telephone service to the VOIP box on the payphone, as well as two other VOIP phones so far - one for sudoroom and one for CCL. The "phone numbers" are sudoroom: SUDO# (7836#) counter culture labs: CCL# (225#) front door: LULZ# (5859#) the asterisk computer is running "FreePBX" and I have no idea how it works. Robb is the expert but he is just getting started/ My vision for the system is thus: Person picks up payphone, gets an immediate recorded message saying "Welcome to the Omni. Please enter the extension of the collective you are trying to reach, or 1 for a directory" and then have it give a directory if you press 1. Then when the collective picks up the phone, they hear that you're outside the door and they can "buzz" the door open by pressing * or whatever on their phone. (Insert magic asterisk script here) Person outside presses the doorbell button: Instead of the doorbell ringing, the button goes to a computer which then calls the payphone, causing it to ring (yes it rings). Person who pressed the doorbell button answers the phone, and hears the above message, since a "doorbell" is really not appropriate for a space like the Omni. (We can still have it be wired to the doorbell but it should do the above and get the people to use the payphone to contact the collective they want) There is no limit on the number of phones we can add. We can put them all over the Omni and probably all over the world with a tiny bit of network routing. Also if you have nice non-cordless telephones (not rotary though) please consider donating them to the project. Or VOIP boxes. I don't think we should tie the system into the regular telephone system, for several reasons. But I do think we should allow hackerspaces around the world to tie into it and be able to call sudoroom and CCL and each other, but we will have to see what the network traffic adds up to on our DSL. Please get in contact with me or Robb if you have ideas for the system or want to help administrate it. We have no idea how to operate Asterisk or FreePBX. thank you -jake