As you can see, the focus is on the use of sign language. Within the
organisation, many of the staff are deaf, and also they all use BSL
(British Sign Language) as their first language. Some of the hearing
staff also can use BSL.
My job with them is that I'm their Linux & Windows System Administrator
- looking after their entire ICT infrastructure dotted in offices
located all across the UK. We also provide a VRS - Video Relay System.
Now that's out of the way! :-) I've joined this group because I'm
looking to provide a solution that I don't think have really been done
before - I want to provide a full complete videophone network - so that
like in a typical office - you would see that every staff have their own
telephone. I want to provide the same for the BDA - using videophones -
so every staff would be able to call each other on the videophone with
ease. I'll also like to have a conference videocall for this as well.
The telephone to use can be something like the Grandstream GXV3000 IP
Videophone which is a SIP videophone using H264 video codec. Sound
obviously isn't important as we would be conversing in sign language
however since we do have hearing staff, they'll have a VoIP capacity as
well.
Finally as we're a charity - we're always short of money so I look at
opensource/freeware solutions to give us what we need.
During my looking around, I came across Asterisk which look like it have
the potential to do what I am looking for except it make no mention of
video even though it can do SIP until I found this email group.
Excellent I'm glad that there are like-minded people that are thinking
of videophones. Should I be successful, then naturally we'll release
loads of PR about it and hopefully get ourselves onto BBC (via a TV
programme called See Hear)
I'll describe the network setup a bit:
In each Regional Office - we have two ADSL lines which all are currently
getting upgraded to 8Mbs/800Kbs via BT Broadband Business (unlimited
bandwidth) - the 800Kbs upload probably means we could have at least 2
videocall going in/out of the office at any time - could Asterisk allow
me to limit the number of videocalls? (ideally we'll love to have SDSL,
but they cost too much)
We have 6 primary Regional Offices - each one have a Linux server
(Debian Sarge) providing the usual office stuff (Samba, DNS, etc) and
the number of staff in each one is quite small - on average about 10
staff so I don't expect to see a large volume of videocalls to drown the
800Kbs upload bandwidth for each office :-)
I'll like to link up all 6 Regional offices within a videophone network.
I'll be interested to hear from you folks if you think that's easily
done with Asterisk? With H.264 video codec (video quality is going to be
very important) and using either hardware-based or software based
videophone for the whole network (for the mobile users with laptop's,
they would use a software based such as the Vcon vPointHD which is
H323/SIP capable videophone software with H264 video codec so that they
can dial home)
Finally if the whole thing works well, I would then use it to improve
the VRS system - allowing a more localised service - one thing about the
use of BSL is that it's very strong on use of regional signs - the sign
language used in Belfast isn't quite the same as the one used in London
so we could allow the use of regional service - ie users will dial to a
"national" VRS and then request Belfast based sign language - the call
can then be forwarded to interpreters in Belfast
Asterisk could run on the servers (they're old, but they will be
replaced with dualcore P4 servers from Dell) in the regional offices.
I'll like to hear your suggestions and feedback
Cheers
--
Joseph Gwynne-Jones
Linux & Windows System Administrator
Sign Community (BDA)
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:33 am Post subject: [Asterisk-video] Videophone based network
Hi Joseph,
Quote:
I want to provide a full complete videophone network - so that
like in a typical office - you would see that every staff have their own
telephone. I want to provide the same for the BDA - using videophones -
so every staff would be able to call each other on the videophone with
ease. I'll also like to have a conference videocall for this as well.
Video calling works within asterisk today, albeit with some limitations.
If you are all using the same video phone (and the same codec) then it
should be able to provide this service for you without too much trouble.
The conferencing part can be provided by using app_videoswitch which
allows a single switchable view per caller (but no mixing of video). You
could also use this in your VRS implementation.
Quote:
The telephone to use can be something like the Grandstream GXV3000 IP
Videophone which is a SIP videophone using H264 video codec. Sound
obviously isn't important as we would be conversing in sign language
however since we do have hearing staff, they'll have a VoIP capacity as
well.
H.264 is only in the svn trunk version of asterisk, but hopefully the
1.4 beta will be out soon...
Quote:
In each Regional Office - we have two ADSL lines which all are currently
getting upgraded to 8Mbs/800Kbs via BT Broadband Business (unlimited
bandwidth) - the 800Kbs upload probably means we could have at least 2
videocall going in/out of the office at any time - could Asterisk allow
me to limit the number of videocalls? (ideally we'll love to have SDSL,
but they cost too much)
You should be able to use the call-limit setting in the sip user
definition to limit the number of calls, but there is the usual concern
about contended bandwidth really giving you 800k. Another thing to watch
out for today is packet re-ordering - if you see re-ordering on your
network you may have problems due to the way asterisk re-generates
sequence numbers.
Quote:
I'll like to link up all 6 Regional offices within a videophone network.
I'll be interested to hear from you folks if you think that's easily
done with Asterisk? With H.264 video codec (video quality is going to be
very important) and using either hardware-based or software based
videophone for the whole network (for the mobile users with laptop's,
they would use a software based such as the Vcon vPointHD which is
H323/SIP capable videophone software with H264 video codec so that they
can dial home)
Asterisk doesn't support any trans-coding between video codecs, so you
would need to stick with one (probably H.264 from what you say). As it
stands today I don't believe H323 video works out of the box, but I know
that some people on this list have patches to make it work.
Neil
--
Neil Stratford - http://www.vipadia.com/ - sip:call@vipadia.com
Vipadia Limited :: VoIP Research and Development
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 12:40 pm Post subject: [Asterisk-video] Videophone based network
Neil Stratford wrote:
Quote:
The conferencing part can be provided by using app_videoswitch which
allows a single switchable view per caller (but no mixing of video). You
could also use this in your VRS implementation.
Where is app_videoswitch available from? I didn't see anything on google.
--
Cheers,
Matt Riddell
_______________________________________________
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:10 pm Post subject: [Asterisk-video] Videophone based network
Hi Matt,
Quote:
Where is app_videoswitch available from? I didn't see anything on google.
I'll mail you a link off-list. I want to fix a couple of known issues
and do some tidying before making it more widely available. Hopefully
I'll get the time later this week to do it.
Neil
--
Neil Stratford - http://www.vipadia.com/ - sip:call@vipadia.com
Vipadia Limited :: VoIP Research and Development
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:00 am Post subject: [Asterisk-video] Videophone based network
Hi Neil
app_videoswitch sounds interesting. Would be nice, if you post the link
to the list.
thx
cheers
ralph
Neil Stratford wrote:
Quote:
Hi Matt,
> Where is app_videoswitch available from? I didn't see anything on google.
I'll mail you a link off-list. I want to fix a couple of known issues
and do some tidying before making it more widely available. Hopefully
I'll get the time later this week to do it.
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:13 am Post subject: [Asterisk-video] Videophone based network
Hi Neil;
I'm very interested in videoswitch, first I want to know what exactly it
does, how do you pretend to control witch video to show, and if you can
send me the link to take a look.
Thanks
Ian Esper
Neil Stratford wrote:
Quote:
Hi Matt,
> Where is app_videoswitch available from? I didn't see anything on
> google.
I'll mail you a link off-list. I want to fix a couple of known issues
and do some tidying before making it more widely available. Hopefully
I'll get the time later this week to do it.
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