Re: Re: Update on xAP Asterisk?

[Gregg Liming <gregg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Christopher (9/15/05 4:05 PM):
> I too am interested in XAP enabling my asterisk PBX. I currently run
> a Homeseer 1.7 setup with the XAP connector, im looking to be able
> to control homeseer devices, execute homeseer scripts etc via Auto
> attendants or extensions on my asterisk PBX. I thought that someone
> by the name of patrick lidstone had asterisk fully xap enabled.. did
> he not release his code or programs to the public? is this project
> abandoned on his end? or is gregg's project another to operate as
> well,

I can't speak to any work that Patrick may have done; perhaps he will
respond.  My work on this front has taken a while to get started; but, I
am now (finally) making some progress.  The reason for taking a while is
that this approach is purely non-intrusive wrt the Asterisk dialplan and
I have to determine what combinations of Asterisk event sequences cause
a state that can be reasonably reported on.  I've also been trying to
refactor a portion of existing mh xAP code into a library that can be
used for projects like this and others (e.g., zoneminder).  That being
said, the basic approach seems to look good so far as I can now maintain
a calling state machine w/i the app (something that AGIs have a very
hard time with).  In case Paul is listening, I am grabbing
"newmessagecount" and "oldmessagecount" for voicemail
boxes that are
user defined w/ no problem.

I'm guessing that I'm a week or 2 away from something that the "hard
core" would find useful.

> i am available for any testing like im sure many others are.

That's good.  The initial "test" release will only be tested
against my
inspection of xAP messages--not against apps like SB.  So, there will no
doubt be issues there.   FWIW: my real interest is with integration with
Misterhouse; so, my own testing w/ SB will be deferred. Also, I would
suggest initial testers be somewhat *nix savvy as there are a number of
issues like launching and perl library updates that may be a bit
non-trivial at first.

> I
> started with asterisk@home but have pretty much abandoned editing my
> configs with AMP due to the limited functionality and so im pretty
> much using it now as a regular distro and manually edit my configs.

That's good; because, it's likely that this connector will assume a fair
degree of expertise w/ Asterisk and *nix.  Specfically, there is no
"install shield"-like ease of installation; and, very definitely
no
"snazzy" GUI.

On a final note, initial functionality will be xAP messages appropriate
for CID, outgoing call logging, and (assuming that the schema for MWI
can be worked out) MWI.  More advanced features like directed dialing
(i.e., using xAP to initiate a call) will take a bit longer.  There will
also almost certainly need to be extensions to existing schemas and/or
new ones to handle the features that are useful w/i Asterisk.

HTH,

Gregg