James Rathbun

Since the I started documenting some of my projects on my website, I think it important to give an overview of everything done so far, and try to describe how my thoughts and priorities are changing based on the results of my experience so far.

Website

Traffic to the website is light, but gaining ground steadily.  I am hopeful that as I continue to write more, traffic will increase as people of like interests discover the website.   In what free time I have, I am studying WordPress as much as possible.  There are a lot of great articles written on the subject, but my greatest like and dislike of the software is the “WordPressyness” of it.  More on that later…

ChuckBox (Camp Kitchen)

Although I haven’t posted photos yet, this is done.  It meats my goals in the short term and I look forward to taking it on a camping trip in the near future.

Phone Server

This is mostly done, but not yet complete. This is sad for me as the Nevada Presidential caucuses are just around the corner and will not be deployed in time for all the robo calls telling me for whom to vote or caucus.  The only remaining task is to record the voicemail setup.

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As a network administrator I have the opportunities to work with a lot of networking equipment.  Long ago I lost track of all the firewalls and routers that I configured.  The list would read as a laundry list of equipment and include Cisco, Sonicwall, custom-built Linux servers and IPCop.  The cost of this hardware can be intimidating, especially for the home user.

For my home network, for years I would buy a reasonably priced wireless routers which could be purchased and Fry’s, Best Buy or any of the retail stores in the area.  I don’t recall ever purchasing a router online as typically you need it to replace the previous router which just failed.

I would buy ”all in one” wireless routers which would be highly recommend by friends or coworkers.  Once installed, they would work great for about 6 months and then fail.  I would RMA the routers, and when the replacement arrived I would give it away, simply because I can’t do my job without my internet connection.   The last router I purchased was a dual channel wireless N router, and sure enough, after about 6 months, it again failed.   I noticed on this failure, that they way it failed was the key to my problem.

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As part of my home PBX server project , I needed the ability to connect my existing home phone infrastructure into my Asterisk PBX server.  In addition to regular phones, I have a DVR and home alarm system and poor cell phone coverage.  The solution to connecting a regular phone to a modern PBX Server is a VoIP adapter such as the Linksys SPA-3102.  The great news is that this product is only about $80 if you shop around for it.  This may seem like more than it should cost, but when you consider the price of phones these days, and the monthly cost of phone server in the home, this cost is covered in just a few months of savings.

The Linksys SPA-3102 is a VoIP media gateway which allows you to connect your regular phone using an RJ-11 phone jack, and convert audio signal into a SIP compliant TCP/IP signal.  The original configuration for this device is that it replaces your home router.  Currently, my home router of choice is a Netgear Prosafe VPN Firewall FVS318v3.  I am very pleased with the reliability and performance of this router, is it succeeds where many other routers failed.  This fact alone forced me to set up my Linksys VoIP gateway a bit differently.

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As a lifelong outdoors man, I have hiked, rafted, backpacked and camped across most of desert southwest.  As such, I have learned very well what I do and don’t need when I leave the city. I am perfectly happy finding a clearing just off a tail and setting up a campsite.  A few years ago my wife and I purchased a four door Jeep Wrangler JK which we use quite often to go on day drives.  The challenge is load and organize all of our gear and carry it in a medium size SUV.

My goal is to build a chuck box, or camp kitchen, which is a simple box to store all the kitchen supplies needed for a successful camping trip.  The chuck box needs to balance strength, weight and most importantly for me, size.  The chuck box needs to contain all of gear and would enable to set up our campsite in no time.  I am hoping to keep it small enough and lite enough that I can easily move it with no help.  The Jeep 4 door Wrangler does not have a large about of cargo space especially for a family of three and a yellow Labrador.

I have several goals:

1. I want the chuck box to fix in the back of the jeep with the back seats usable.
2. The box must contain all of our cooking gear,  including a stove, pots, frying pans, dutch oven, plates, utensils, cleaning supplies, etc…
3. Everything is carried securely AND  organized in such a way that it keeps down the noise potential when driving on the back roads.
4. The box needs to be light weight yet strong enough to survive the pounding of camping, ‘jeepin’, etc…

In my continuing efforts to keep up to date with the latest of technology and lower my own monthly expenses, I have built a home phone server for my home office.  As cell phones continue to gain in popularity, and coverage areas expand, this may seem like an old solution to a modern problem.  I know several households that no longer have a home land line, and they just use their cell phones.  This is a great idea, but sadly for some of us, it not a solution for a variety of reasons.

1. Cost: I want to have a phone line, voice-mail, etc… and NOT pay way too much money for a large corporation.  I am planning on running the phone server and utilizing Google’s free Google Voice service which provides incoming and outgoing phone service.  In time they may change for this service, but other companies offer phone numbers and service for a starting cost of about $4 / month.  This is much less expensive that my current monthly phone bill.
2. Lack of Coverage:  Cell phone reception at my house is poor depending upon your service provider.
3. Old technology: I have several devices in my home, such as alarms, DVR’s etc… that do not use the Internet to connect to the service provider.  This is a sad state of technology, which is the reality of the times.
4. Call Routing: A phone server will allow me to send calls from multiple sources, and route them to different locations depending upon their source.  Also, as an example should someone call, and wish to speak with my wife Heather, I can easily transfer the call to her cell.
5. Call screening: During political seasons, and living in a swing state for the presidential elections, I tend to get a lot of political calls.  During the last election cycle, I would receive up to 20 phone calls per day.  This is the sad state of our political system and really annoying for me.  When the calls start coming in next time, I may force the caller to press the ’1′ key on their phone to complete the call.  This should stop all ‘Robo Calls’.
6. Continuing Education: A big part of my goal here is to teach myself how SIP phone servers work.

Many people, Blogs, consultants, etc… have written a lot about setting up an Asterisk SIP phone server with Google Voice.  I have not invented anything here, and rely heavily on their hard work and dedication to their craft.  So that being said, here is what I did to get Asterisk running with Google Voice.

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