Free Homebrew VoIP with Google Voice and Intel Atom

[Illuminati]

Bad news guys. According the the SIPgate website, the only free thing they have is the first 60 min of service. after that its 1.9 cents a min.

I guess nothings free after all.

This should only be if you use the DID phone number to call other land lines. With the Google Voice instructions, you are using the SIP connectivity and that should always be free.

[ss.gif]

Will you hop onto your sipgate account and tell me what you number of minuets left is? just to see if there free service is SIP to SIP or Sipgate to Sipgate. i have a feeling its the latter of the two.

[Illuminati]

Here is a SS of my SipGate account balance... Looks good to me, no charges and specifies free US phone number.

SipGate balance $0 on free account. :)

sipgateBalance.jpg (18.79 KiB) Viewed 4346 times

[ss.gif]

One last thing. You don't need to post a screen shot of it. When you log in, it brings you up to a screen that looks vaguely like the google mail index page. at the top right, how many minuets does it say you have left?

That the biggest thing that would stop me from using this is if i had to pay 2 cents a min, that can really add up fast for me.

[Illuminati]

Mine shows a spot where it says my account's balance is $0.00, but it always has because I've never added any minutes and SipGate does not even have my credit card information. I would not have signed up with them if I needed to provide it.

I do not see a spot where it shows number of minutes available when I first log on, just my $0 account balance.

[Illuminati]

I looked at the SipGate Rates page and noticed this that may be causing the confusion:

The applicable rate depends on the number dialed - not from where you are calling.

The rates only apply to outgoing calls. You get unlimited incoming calls to your SipGate phone number that is free. However, outgoing calls go out directly through Google Voice. So we never make an outgoing call from SipGate. My outgoing calls log on my SipGate profile is completely empty. But my incoming calls log shows both my incoming calls and my outgoing calls... Here's why.

When I make an outgoing call, Asterisk sends the number I dialed, plus my SipGate number to Google. Google then places two calls, one to the number I dialed, and one to my SipGate number. Asterisk then merges those calls together and I start hearing rings on my phone. It takes a couple of seconds for this all to take place, but that's not much worse than a traditional phone line.

Hope this clears up the confusion...

[ss.gif]

Ok that makes it a lot more clear. Thanks for helping a lot. I always thought you could never get anything for free and so seeing that one area for the rates after 60 min confused me.

[theermine]

Great guide, for some reason I'm having a problem routing local calls out the PSTN line though. When I send them to the PSTN trunk I get an all circuits busy. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Illuminati]

Great guide, for some reason I'm having a problem routing local calls out the PSTN line though. When I send them to the PSTN trunk I get an all circuits busy. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Did you set your Outbound Routes to use a 7 digit number on the OutPSTN route and make sure the 7 digit number is not part of the GoogleVoice Outbound Route? That's the only suggestion I have at this point... but let us know if you've tried this.

[tiljaray]

How do the instructions change with "Free Homebrew VoIP with Google Voice" if i am using a cable modem with no need for the 911 operation? Or is 911easy to set up with the cable modem. i am not planning to hook up a traditional phone line to avoid the monthly phone bill.

[Illuminati]

How do the instructions change with "Free Homebrew VoIP with Google Voice" if i am using a cable modem with no need for the 911 operation? Or is 911easy to set up with the cable modem. i am not planning to hook up a traditional phone line to avoid the monthly phone bill.

For starters, you may want to purchase the Linksys SPA-2102 instead of the SPA-3102. This will allow you to connect to more than one VoIP provider as is the case of the SPA-3102. Your Asterisk/PBX in a Flash Server counts as your first VoIP provider as far as this device is concerned.

Then as far as the instructions go, you should be able to ignore the following: Note: this will ignore 911 service altogether. In order to have 911 service, I believe you can purchase 911 service from SipGate, but I will leave how to configure that up to you and Google.

On Page 5 in the Configuring Asterisk Extensions for the SPA-3102 section, you do not need to create extensions 99 or 199.

Then still on Page 5, under Configuring the Linksys SPA-3102 section, you may wish to disable Auto PSTN Fallback by setting it to 'no' instead of 'yes'. Then in this section, you would again omit the configuration for extensions 99 and 199 on the PSTN Line tab since no PSTN line will be connected.

Then on Page 6, you would skip the steps for creating the 'PSTN' Trunk and 'OutPSTN' Outbound Route. You would also be able to skip editing the extensions_custom.conf file. So basically on Page 6 of this guide, just skip to installing a softphone if you will not be configuring a PSTN line.

The rest of the instructions should still apply whether you use the Linksys SPA-3102 vs the SPA 2102. Hope this helps! Enjoy!

[Illuminati]

For those that have followed these instructions before Sept 30th, our friend Ward Mundy posted up some quick steps that installs an updated version of pygooglevoice to react to some changes made by googlevoice updates. If you plan on following these instructions now or in the future, you do not need to do these steps!

Log into your server as root and do the following:

First, create a new /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo file that looks like this:

Code: Select all

[dag]
name=DAG APT Repository
baseurl=http://dag.linux.iastate.edu/dag/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Once you have that file in place:

Code: Select all

cd /root
yum install mercurial
rm -r pygooglevoice
hg clone https://pygooglevoice.googlecode.com/hg/ pygooglevoice
cd pygooglevoice
rm /usr/bin/gvoice
python setup.py install

[Apoptosis]

might want to update the original article and remove those steps if they are no longer needed.

[tiljaray]

Thank you for the instructions. They are very helpful!

How do the instructions change with "Free Homebrew VoIP with Google Voice" if i am using a cable modem with no need for the 911 operation? Or is 911easy to set up with the cable modem. i am not planning to hook up a traditional phone line to avoid the monthly phone bill.

For starters, you may want to purchase the Linksys SPA-2102 instead of the SPA-3102. This will allow you to connect to more than one VoIP provider as is the case of the SPA-3102. Your Asterisk/PBX in a Flash Server counts as your first VoIP provider as far as this device is concerned.

Then as far as the instructions go, you should be able to ignore the following: Note: this will ignore 911 service altogether. In order to have 911 service, I believe you can purchase 911 service from SipGate, but I will leave how to configure that up to you and Google.

On Page 5 in the Configuring Asterisk Extensions for the SPA-3102 section, you do not need to create extensions 99 or 199.

Then still on Page 5, under Configuring the Linksys SPA-3102 section, you may wish to disable Auto PSTN Fallback by setting it to 'no' instead of 'yes'. Then in this section, you would again omit the configuration for extensions 99 and 199 on the PSTN Line tab since no PSTN line will be connected.

Then on Page 6, you would skip the steps for creating the 'PSTN' Trunk and 'OutPSTN' Outbound Route. You would also be able to skip editing the extensions_custom.conf file. So basically on Page 6 of this guide, just skip to installing a softphone if you will not be configuring a PSTN line.

The rest of the instructions should still apply whether you use the Linksys SPA-3102 vs the SPA 2102. Hope this helps! Enjoy!

[Illuminati]

might want to update the original article and remove those steps if they are no longer needed.

Nothing needs to change in the original article as following the original article would pick up the updated version of pygooglevoice and the steps above would not need to be done. Those are only if you already followed the article and need to update pygooglevoice manually. So I think if someone followed the article, and things quit working, they would come to the forum for any help and see the steps they need to do.
The items I listed are still important for the target of the article, I just let tiljaray know what he could skip if he had cable internet instead of DSL where he could still set it up to be able to dial 911.

[tiljaray]

Just ask for an invite and they will send you one: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/.
I did this 2 weeks ago and again a week ago and no results. What gives

[Apoptosis]

not sure... might want to try again with a gmail address

[twinclouds]

Hi, Justin:
Thank you very much for your detailed instructions described in this review. I have been try to set something up like that a few time but none of these were successful. The described method either too complicated or didn't give me good results. The approach given by Nerd Vittles that you based on does not give detailed instruction and requires some background that I didn't have. I was really happy that I can follow your description step by step and the call setup works perfectly. The only step didn't work for me is the section of place 911 call through PSTN. To make it work, I skipped the setup of PSTN Line in 3102 and the related trunk, port 99 and port 199 setups. Then, I followed the 3102 user guide given in: http://www.jmgtechnology.com.au/spa_3102_guide.pdf. I simply added one item "911S0<:@gw0>" in the Line 1 dial plan and I think it should work. (I didn't really dial 911 but instead I put 1800xx. in the place of 911 and the 1-800-xxx-xxxx calls went though the PSTN just fine.) Do you see any issues with that setting?
Again, thank you for your good tutorial. I would recommend it to anyone who is also interested in using Asterisk, Sipgate and Google Voice for free US/Canada calling.

[tiljaray]

I can receive calls but i cannot make calls. Can you stear me in the right direction? I did not set up the PSTN line for 911 service, also i am using the 2102 phone router. I wanted to activate my sipgate number through google voice, but when i try to verify the phone it will not ring my sipgate phone number through google. Maybe it is a setup problem on my part.

[Illuminati]

Due to the fast pace in which Google Voice is still being developed and tweaked, portions of the scripts and such have been changed and in some cases re-written. Refer to the latest guide over at NerdVittles.com to install their latest script with their latest instructions. The portions in my article surrounding the setup of the VoIP Router should still work, though.