Asterisk

Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX); it was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. It allows attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Its name comes from the asterisk symbol, *.

I use a distro called FreePBX on a Raspberry-pi B+.

I use (POTS) Plain Old Telephone System, analog phones and IP phones on my system. Each caller can choose from a menu to reach the extension of the person they want to talk to. Each extension is also an intercom that can use an IR menu and has the ability to use voice commands to choose the menu item. I use Google voice for this feature. Each phone can use the following menu.

dial
D-E-M-O – Incredible PBX Demo (running on your PBX)
Z-I-P – Enter a five digit zip code for any U.S. weather report
6-1-1 – Enter a 3-character airport code for any U.S. weather report
5-1-1 – Get the latest news and sports headlines from Yahoo News
T-I-D-E – Get today’s tides and lunar schedule for any U.S. port
F-A-X – Send a fax to an email address of your choice
4-1-2 – Phonebook lookup/dialer with AsteriDex
M-A-I-L – Record a message and deliver it to any email address
C-O-N-F – Set up a MeetMe Conference on the fly
1-2-3 – Schedule regular/recurring reminder (PW: 12345678)
2-2-2 – ODBC/Timeclock Lookup Demo (Empl No: 12345)
2-2-3 – ODBC/AsteriDex Lookup Demo (Code: AME)
3-3-3 – Look up a definition for any word or term
9-4-9 – Weather forecast for any city in the world
9-5-0 – Retrieve stock report by stock symbol
9-5-1 – Latest Google News headlines
Dial *68 – Schedule a hotel-style wakeup call from any extension