Getting a Cisco 30VIP and/or 12SP+ working on Asterisk
The 30VIP and 12SP+ are older Selsius Systems phones, a company that was bought by Cisco. Later models are rebranded by Cisco have the glorius Cisco logo smeared on it. The 12SP+ is a 'desk phone' with 12 programmable buttons on it, while the 30VIP is more of a 'receptionist phone' with 30 buttons on it. they are both solid phones that are cheap and robust, really good for getting into Hardware VoIP on a budget.Getting them to work with Asterisk is moderately easy to the semi-clueful user. Certain caveats apply though, most people do seem to run into them. Let's go over the basics:
There are two major drivers used for the Cisco Call Manager Protocol, Asterisk's chan_skinny and the 3rd party chan_sccp. What it boils down to is compatiblity vs features, chan_skinny working on most every phone by Cisco, versus chan_sccp working a limited set of phones, but having a boat load of features. First off, chan_sccp WILL NOT WORK PROPERLY ON 12SP/30VIP PHONES WITH FIRMWARE < 3.0 chan_sccp has some issues of releasing the channel on the phones and pressing the wrong softbutton on the phone sometimes crashes the Asterisk server. Whoops.
If you have 3.0 or greater on the phones, use chan_sccp until your hearts content. It is a fantasic driver and the features it has leave me for longing for 3.0 firmware for my phones. However, if you are stuck with chan_skinny, I am planning to code some more 'advanced' features into chan_skinny.
Normally, I would submit this as a patch, but since digium makes you sign a disclaimer, and quite frankly, I can't be bothered to fax one over, I am releasing this as a 3rd party enhancement.
News:
January 5th, 2005Added 'real' caller ID support with name, and fixed it so it rings when AST_CONTROL_RING is sent by *. Voice Mail Indication sorta-works as well. It only checks when the phone is placed on-hook though. The line light will blink. So, because I want it to automatically do it, it is not done.
To Do:
This should take me a while *wibble*
Downloads
THIS CODE HAS BEEN INCORPORATED INTO THE ASTERISK CVS AS OF 1/25/2005!! I finally got off my ass and faxed in my disclaimer. If you want to patch an older verison of Asterisk, feel free, but right now, all further developemtn I'll be submitting directly to Digium.