[LUG] Asterisk and SPA3000

Hi,

I decided I’m finally fed up with cold callers and silent calls coming to my landline. I’ve long wanted an excuse to try using Asterisk and I figured this was it.

I didn’t want to spend much money so I bought myself a SPA3000 box from ebay for about £16 and set about connecting it to my Asterisk box. I wanted a simple menu system when people ring from an unrecognised number asking them the nature of their call. I have asterisk itself running on a little mini Ubuntu server which sits under my telly.

The SPA3000 is plugged into my master phone socket (via an ADSL filter) and into my old DECT phone.

Asterisk seems to have a reputation of being pretty hard to get to grips with but I think I’ve done pretty well. I have a menu system and calls are picked up when they come in from the landline and are forwarded correctly to the DECT phones in the house. However I have two problems which I can’t solve.

I get terrible echo when talking to people on the DECT phone. Ie I hear myself back, maybe with a ~300ms delay. However the person on the remote end reports that I am very clear with no echo at all.

I can’t actually get the voice menu to work when people phone my landline number. It doesn’t recognise the tones. However when I install a SIP client on my mobile and connect that to the menu system in Asterisk it seems to work perfectly.

I have read reports that the echo cancelation on the SPA3000 is a bit rubbish and that there is a serious issue with DTMF detection (I followed the instructions to solve it with no success so far). I have tried various firmware versions to try and fix this but nothing seems to have improved it.

What I’d like to know is, should I just give up with the SPA3000, is it too old/rubbish? Is there any other way I can do this on the cheap? (Hopefully <£25). Have I given up too soon?

I can’t make use of PCI cards to connect to the telephone line because my ‘home server’ PC is a little nettop box which has no expansions options other than USB.

I’d really appreciate any advice you have. I’m disappointed to have got so close yet so far.

Cheers,

Paul