PLA voice menu bbs voicemail uh thingie

[rbcp]

Last night I got an Asterisk box set up.  In a couple of days, the voip provider will have a number assigned to me.  I've been wanting to do this for the past couple of year, but I've never had a spare computer for it.  I bought a used spare computer last year and it promptly broke down.  Anyway, since I purchased a new laptop recently, my old laptop is now an Asterisk box.

Anyway, what this all means is that I get to make a PLA-themed voice system that you can call into.  Since Asterisk can do just about anything, the possibilities are endless.  Making PLA Radio available via the phone is obvious.  I'd really like to set up a Voice BBS, though.  This is something the old Defcon voice bridge had and it was a lot of fun.  It works sort of like a shoutbox, where you can listen to a list of messages, then tack your own onto the beginning if you want to.

I doubt I'll set up a conference bridge.  I don't want to dedicate my bandwidth to that.  But what else should I use it for?  Archives of prank calls?  Dial a story?  Choose your own adventure? Bridging random phone numbers to you to prank call?  Give me ideas.

I'm a newb at linux so it might take me awhile to really get it going.  But I'll definitely have something up this week.  I'll post the phone number in here once it's up.

[JD716]

The idea of bridging random numbers is a great idea, could you make it possible that it shows up with "Dino Allsman" and his number on the caller ID? That would be fun for 3-am prank calls

[cricket]

You should host the questions game, where someone asks a question, and the next person can only answer with another question.

[RijilV]

I always wanted to setup a voice-BBS - similar to the format of Renegade BBS - forums, files, games.  I figured it would be pretty easy to 'port' games like Legend of the Red Dragon to the telephone.  I think for the forums part it would be easier to change the interface to an existing forum software.  I did a bunch of work on this about 2 years ago...if you want to get together and work on something let me know.

[Tachyon]

That's really cool, you should totally make the calls all available, ditto the DefCon idea. We don't need another stupid voicebridge, look at what a trainwreck this one is. What WOULD be fun is if you could hook it up to GOOG-411 but don't tell anyone what it's registered as and we'd have to be all l33t and find it.

[rbcp]

I always wanted to setup a voice-BBS - similar to the format of Renegade BBS - forums, files, games.  I figured it would be pretty easy to 'port' games like Legend of the Red Dragon to the telephone.  I think for the forums part it would be easier to change the interface to an existing forum software.  I did a bunch of work on this about 2 years ago...if you want to get together and work on something let me know.

Thanks for the offer, RijilV, I may need the help.

About the randomizing prank call thing - there's no way I could do that.  It would be fun little system until it started happening upon FBI and NSA numbers.  Or until someone started using it to make bomb threats.  I don't trust you people one bit!

[Nod]

I always wanted to setup a voice-BBS - similar to the format of Renegade BBS - forums, files, games.  I figured it would be pretty easy to 'port' games like Legend of the Red Dragon to the telephone.  I think for the forums part it would be easier to change the interface to an existing forum software.  I did a bunch of work on this about 2 years ago...if you want to get together and work on something let me know.

Thanks for the offer, RijilV, I may need the help.

About the randomizing prank call thing - there's no way I could do that.  It would be fun little system until it started happening upon FBI and NSA numbers.  Or until someone started using it to make bomb threats.  I don't trust you people one bit!

Not even this much? → ←

[samo]

I think it would be really awesome to see some more creative things like the choose your own adventure games, although unless you're gonna use voice recognition, it might be kinda lame to have to use dtmf for that. I would love to see an Adventure-like game that you could play by calling the pbx. Also, the search for the goog 411 listings would be really awesome. You should also have a meatphone function.

[Nod]

I think it would be really awesome to see some more creative things like the choose your own adventure games, although unless you're gonna use voice recognition, it might be kinda lame to have to use dtmf for that. I would love to see an Adventure-like game that you could play by calling the pbx. Also, the search for the goog 411 listings would be really awesome. You should also have a meatphone function.

Meatphones have been compatible with calling pbx's since v1.3.

[RijilV]

I think it would be really awesome to see some more creative things like the choose your own adventure games, although unless you're gonna use voice recognition, it might be kinda lame to have to use dtmf for that. I would love to see an Adventure-like game that you could play by calling the pbx. Also, the search for the goog 411 listings would be really awesome. You should also have a meatphone function.

For the choose your own adventure it would be pretty easy to take something as simple as the popular line of books and do that - as those rarely had more than three choices if even that.  The hard part would be finding something that sounds good for the text to speech.

Google 411: I have an AGI script for it laying around somewhere, it even cached results   Though it was some time ago, I'd probably want to rewrite it before giving it out - I think it was only like 15 lines of code so it wouldn't take very long.

Doing an Adventure-like game would be pretty tricky.  Same could be said about TradeWars2002, though I think that would be easier to do than an Adventure game but equally hard to play over the phone.  Given that you're going to have to listen to everything it would be best to stick to simple games - players won't be able to glance at the screen to get the relevant information or reread anything. 

Though setting up a chess game would be pretty cool - its only 8x8 so it would be somewhat easy to set up an interface to it via the keypad, it would just be hard to remember where everything is..

Things like LoRD would be easy enough - similar games like Assassin - and there was a cyberpunk game - wouldn't require a whole lot either - though Usurper might have too many options to be easy to play.  Barren Realms Elite, Falcon's Eye, SRE, etc would be possible, but might be somewhat hard to play, though that would be completely rad - particularly if we set it up to connect to other BBS's.

I think another cool feature would be a text file reader, and point it at textfiles.com or something.

Also some type of instant messaging that would alert the user if there was a message for them from time to time..And some type of voicemail (hehe we could do that encrypted voicemail nonsense I have laying around). 

Yeah I dunno, if you wanna get working on this sometime RBCP drop me a line.  I'd probably want to write it all as an AGI - most likely in Perl though I could be talked into C or if someone else was going to help develop it, Ruby.  I must confess I've always wanted to set something like this up, but never really felt anyone would use it

[Zazen]

For the choose your own adventure it would be pretty easy to take something as simple as the popular line of books and do that - as those rarely had more than three choices if even that.  The hard part would be finding something that sounds good for the text to speech.

Google 411: I have an AGI script for it laying around somewhere, it even cached results   Though it was some time ago, I'd probably want to rewrite it before giving it out - I think it was only like 15 lines of code so it wouldn't take very long.

Doing an Adventure-like game would be pretty tricky.  Same could be said about TradeWars2002, though I think that would be easier to do than an Adventure game but equally hard to play over the phone.  Given that you're going to have to listen to everything it would be best to stick to simple games - players won't be able to glance at the screen to get the relevant information or reread anything. 

Though setting up a chess game would be pretty cool - its only 8x8 so it would be somewhat easy to set up an interface to it via the keypad, it would just be hard to remember where everything is..

Things like LoRD would be easy enough - similar games like Assassin - and there was a cyberpunk game - wouldn't require a whole lot either - though Usurper might have too many options to be easy to play.  Barren Realms Elite, Falcon's Eye, SRE, etc would be possible, but might be somewhat hard to play, though that would be completely rad - particularly if we set it up to connect to other BBS's.

I think another cool feature would be a text file reader, and point it at textfiles.com or something.

Most of this stuff is a lot easier to do at a computer. I think people will get a kick out of trying phone chess and then not finish the actual game. Ditto with the other features.

My buddy at work set up a phone chess system like 20 years ago with his friend. The friend sunk a lot of money into it thinking it'd be a successful business, but alas nobody wants to play phone chess.

What features are actually better or more convenient over the phone?

[Nod]

Arbie should just make it a f0n s3cks line or one of that ninety nine cents a minute game hot lines so he can make a bunch of money off of it. Just put them on hold for as long as you can and then drop the call.

[rbcp]

Nobody ever uses these forums anymore, but I'm bringing up this old thread anyway to share some news related to the wacky Asterisk idea from 6 years ago.  I actually don't even remember setting up Asterisk in 2007 at all.  I do remember setting one up in 2009 and had it working, but it was crashing daily, probably because it was a crappy old computer, so I gave up on it after a couple of weeks.  I can't seem to find a thread related to that one.  Anyway, my latest news...

I purchased a computer just for Asterisk!  It's a 2010 Dell and it's been running the FreePBX version of Asterisk for over a week now with zero crashes so far.  I've set up a Google Voice number that points to it, which is FREE instead of the $8/month I was paying for Flowroute before.  I'm not sure if it allows simultaneous connections, but if it doesn't I can set up a few more of them.  I've been playing around with it all week and I've got some IVR stuff working and it's taking calls and it's awesome.

Today I purchased a couple of Linksys VoIP phone adapters which, if all goes well, will give my Asterisk system 4 phone connections.  I plan to use these to hook some old answering machines to for people to hack.   I'm going to find the oldest, crappiest tape-based answering machines I can to hook up to it.  If anyone has any ideas for other old phone equipment to connect to it, let me know.

I still plan to do the "voice BBS" thing.  So far I haven't found an existing plugin for that, but I'm sure I can put one together myself.  I'll be surprised if something like that isn't publicly available, though.  I'm also hoping that it's possible to set up a red boxing section.  I'm assuming Asterisk can recognize tones other than standard touch tones.  Either way, I'm sure some cool things will happen from all this.

Please let me know if any of you have idea ideas for it.  I will post the number as soon as I feel like it's ready, which SHOULD be next week after the Linksys stuff arrives.

[rbcp]

Hello, Brad!  (Get it?  Because I'm the only one who uses these forums?)  For over a week now I've been playing around with Asterisk stuff, but the really exciting stuff happened this morning when UPS delivered  my Linksys phone adapters.  I can now hook up 4 answering machines, or other archaic phone equipment, to my Asterisk box!  So far I've got 2 machines hooked up to it and I'm going to visit a few thrift stores tonight to search for a couple more old machines.

The phone numbers to connect are 425-243-7565 and 505-796-5789.  The 425 is a Google Voice line and it only allows 1 connection at a time.  The 505 number is with Flowroute and it allows 2 connections.  I'm paying around $8/month for Flowroute, so I'm hoping to find a better deal on that.  At the very least, I'd like to accept a few more calls at a time on a single phone line.  Or maybe I'll just hook up a dozen Google Voice lines, who knows.

Turns out that nobody has made a voice BBS for asterisk like I was hoping to set up.  So it looks like I'm going to be attempting to put together my own FreePBX module.  Hopefully I can get started on that soon.

Here is a picture of the answering machines and other miscellaneous crap I have hooked up right now.  I also posted it on Twitter, in case you're a weirdo who hates Facebook.

[hamburger]

It'd be neat for you to scam a real PRI somehow.  If you're hooked up on the phone company the right way you can put whatever you want for caller-id.