I know we have serveral members interested in VOIP, myself included, and since the TCAUG has been without a regular meeting place for a couple months, I thought we could introduce each group to the other.

Most of the TCAUG do work (or play very hard) with Voip, and the meetings have been more of a show and tell than anything else lately, but I have asked a couple folks to see if we can go over the state of VOIP, be it hardware, software, providers etc for this meeting and whatever else can happen

To that end.

Saturday March 13th, from 11:30am to 1:30 pm (or longer, it is our space) the TCAUG will hold their meeting in our classroom.

I hope that those interested can attend.

Just a reminder that this Saturday there will be a meeting at the Hackfactory of the TCAUG.

From what I gathered there is not a set topic, there will be a short Show and Tell of new products, and products that members have had hands on experience with, followed by a open forum and such.

11:30 Saturday in the classroom.

Cool I played around with Asterix awhile ago and it defeated me, but I was quite impressed by what is possible to do in your basement now.

We had a good meeting, Jay Taylor and the group went over the state of VOIP PBX's and such. I am going to schedule the April meeting for the HF again too.

We also got one person who has some gear (3 phase compressor, Metal cutting Bandsaw, Lots of Locksmithing doc's, and other tools and suplies to express an interest in the group.

The also said they would be willing to help as a group set up a environment that we could give each member a voice mail box, create group/project announcement lists, and whatever else we can think of should we want.

I think it would be a good system to have a list that can phone/sms/email a group or class about projects and updates.

BT

Booka, thanks for the report. I'm thinking of switching my home telephone service to VOIP but I never get my butt in gear and do it. When I last used VOIP at home with my work telephone there was some trouble with interference. I also have a bit of a concern over bandwidth being taken from my Internet connection, though I understand a little about QoS and managing bandwidth on my router.

There was a little talk about this subject today, and your concerns are echoed by many. The discussion today had to do with both 911 availability and UPS backup of the provider system for times of power outage.
Because a provider allows you to make outgoing and take incoming calls, Minnesota requires it to provide 911 service (I think it was stated that we are one of eight states that require this). And folks like Comcast and other larger providers do this. Smaller ones should be checked out on the FCC website to see if they are signed up to be a provider.

The other question from today was what happens when the power goes out, a POTS line still works, but will my VOIP system? The response was that they are required to have a UPS in place, but some providers have shown that this system is not always well thought out and tested. Example was given of a battery freezing during cold weather, because the enclosure was just a standard metal enclosure and not well insulated to extreme Minnesota conditions.

Now the group who was there today mostly work as independent's or business grade installations, but they have been in the industry and hear the stories (both successes and failures) of the VOIP consumer market. I think the majority roll their own solutions for home and business use. But if you get to the meeting next month, they should be able to help you answer your concerns and make suggestions if you want to go forward with it.

BT

We need to get these events on the blog.

I have yet to "learn" how to blog here, so I will have to get somebody to show me what I need to do.

On a side note, the TCAUG will be meeting in April at the HF if the second Saturday at 11:30 is clear on the calendar.

Just go to the front page and register and then I can set you up with Author rights.

I see you registered, I bumped you up to Author. Let me know if you want more rights than that.

Otherwise it's just standard WordPress.