The complexity of the entire telecom portion of LinuxMCE has always floored me. When over the years an issue that affected a lot of asterisk/FreePBX hit the forums I would try to follow along but quickly would become confused and lost in the menus and settings necessary to make a call. About 2 years ago I began paying for VOIP service and continued to pay for over 12 months without ever placing or receiving a single call. I have at best been able to make one on-screen orbiter ring another, but the moment I try to pick it up I get a "call dropped, normal clearing". I have tried IP phones, ATAs, softphones, hardphones, orbiter embedded, usb mics, headsets, 3.5mm desktop microphones all to no avail.
Meanwhile during this time the VOIP experience has become so commonplace and easy everywhere else that I canceled my cell service and use wifi apps to handle all of my calling/SMS needs. Watch a 30 second ad on my iPhone and earn 2 minutes of calling. In an hour or so at my desk reaching over and tapping 'watch videos" every few minutes when I think about it gets me 60+ minutes of calling to any number. As I am often experimenting and looking at VMs running different OSs and packages I am amazed at how difficult it is to "not" make a call. I obviously am making something too difficult but can not understand where. Is the telecom plugin that configuration and user input dependent? Below is my setup that I would guess is pretty standard fair.
One hybrid - orbiter embedded phone
Two media directors - each with orbiter embedded
3-4 different DNS services I keep giving money to even though they can not provide me DNS service.
LinuxMCE is behind a router that my ISP provides. Firewall disabled, no custom port configurations or forwardings
One Cisco 7970
One Cisco 7905
One Budgetone 100 (previous voip provider issued, Grandstream is the make)
One Sipura2000
Cisco Mobile iOS
Google Talk #
Google Voice account
Text + account (iOS app I mentioned earlier)
... 5 years worth of accounts, hardware, passwords, registrations etc...
Problems.
Web-Admin/Phone Lines/ shows my voipcheap account enabled but alternates between not-registered, request and I forget the other. I do not have any other phone # so when I registered with VoipCheap I gave my roommate's cell. I do not know if that is my voipcheap number now, or if its +1(area code) 9(areacode). I have found two different guides here and on the wiki that give conflicting information about what to put in the ATA configuration fields for authorization yes/no and user id. Am I supposed to put the extension of the softphone or the voip provider info?
7970 when calling any extension or *## gets a busy signal
7905 gets a loud ringing noise the instant I lift the receiver (device removed as I suspect it may be damaged)
cisco mobile app can call the 7970 though I can only answer by using the softbuttons (or picking it up), attempts to use the orbiter drop the call. This app is also the only device under phones that is capable of reaching my voicemail box.
Softphones (connected through various FXO equipped modems or ATAs) all get a dial tone but go to a busy signal after attempting any call. 2-3 attempted calls results in the loud screeching noise that I have only been able to clear with a reload.
The mobile iOS device status continually enters a "RUN_CONFIG" status where it becomes unuseable. My IP for this device is on the 192.168.80 network and was assigned by dcerouter. It may be a coincidence but I notice more problems after I return home, almost like this device not being ping-able causes an issue?
**Admins please feel free to move this post if you feel it is better suited for help wanted**
This is not an area I am able to troubleshoot and could really use some help on this. My roommates are growing tired of "I am working on it", or "someday you will be able to get calls right here on the tv!" If my problems can be narrowed to 2-3 most likely causes I will jump on any suggested hardware or service providers, I will even wipe my installation and start from step one if needed. If need be, "yes" I am willing to offer some compensation as I am not aware of any major telecom bugs for other users...