First the announcement:
http://pikawarp.org/?p=167
Next the beta program:
http://pikawarp.org/?p=168
Next a thanks to PIKA and Philippe from FreePBX. The collaboration between Schmooze, PIKA, and FreePBX was a true testament to open source and the things you can accomplish.
I'm not too sure how many people here care about it, but it is pretty cool anyway if you are into the Warp.
I had over 15 requests for beta images when I posted about this over a month ago, so you may be surprised.
Any better instructions for installing the image? I have a warp here I would like to try it on but their instructions don't work properly.
I find the easiest way is to transfer the images to a Fat 32 formatted USB stick and drop an autorun script in.
You can get the autorun script at:
http://public.schmoozecom.com/autorun.tar.gz
Just decompress that into the root of the Fat 32 USB stick along with the images. The appliance should be smart enough in its default state to automount the USB stick and execute the autorun which will flash the appliance for you automatically.
It's a bit touchy right now because the new FreePBX images utilize all of the available persistent storage mechanisms and the default images do not. You may have to kill asterisk and httpd before inserting the USB stick. I don't usually have trouble, but some have reported trouble.
PIKA dropped by our office quite awhile ago with a beta of the appliance. Definitely a neat little box, although I wish the pricepoint was a bit lower.
IMHO products in this price range and target market can never be successful without SLA. Just my opinion which is why I currently prefer the Aastralink Pro 160. Once you start adding FXO/FXS ports it starts getting quite a bit cheaper as well.
Again, just my opinion. If there was SLA capability I would be much more excited about the PIKA.
I'm not familiar with the abbreviation "SLA". Does this refer to a single FXS port to connect a POTS phone? If so, the WARP appliance does have one of these ports included in every unit (its part of the baseboard). Optionally, you can add up to two expansion modules to increase the density in increments of 4 FXO or 4 FXS ports. Power fail ports are also part of each expansion module for failover in case of disaster.
you can see more details at http://www.pikawarp.org and http://www.pikatechnologies.com/english/View.asp?x=652
David
WARP Community Director
It is really quite easy to flash images to the PIKA WARP appliance. The procedure can be done in 3 ways. The first two are well documented in the manuals for the WARP appliance. You can access the instructions from the PIKA website here: http://outgoingftp.pikatech.com/appliance/1.1/Docs/html/pads_user... and here: http://outgoingftp.pikatech.com/appliance/1.1/Docs/html/pads_user....
The third way, the method mentioned by ethans above using a USB stick also works quite well. This can also be done using an SD card. Any WARP appliance shipped from PIKA after August 2008 has the ability to flash from USB or SD enabled on it by default. The script provided by ethans above works if you have already flashed your WARP once with a FreePBX image. If you still have the default image on it, you can still use that script but change the references to lighttpd to httpd.
If you have any issues with any of those methods just contact the PIKA support department. Their support is free so just ask for help at support@pikatech.com or you can browse their forums at http://forum.pikatechnologies.com/index.php
Shawn
PIKA F.A.E. and pikawarp.org contributor
No, SLA means Shared Line Appearance which emulates a key system. Each incoming FXO line maps to a button on the phones. It can be done in software and honestly I don't understand why nobody has been able to create an application to do this and add it to Linux/Winblows PBX products.
I know ethans was working on an SLA feature, was that ever completed?
thanks for the clarification of SLA. I get it, it would be a software function.
We also took a very long look at PIKA and ended up going in another direction. Our reasons were price, proprietary hardware, upgrade flexibility, and performance. Except for the FXO/FXS ports, the 2-pound Acer Aspire One NetBook with its Intel Atom motherboard ran circles around the PIKA appliance. And it also provided an almost perfect form factor for those that travel or need Asterisk support in a branch office, a remote construction site, an emergency phone system after a hurricane or terrorist attack, etc. With wired and wireless support and the addition of Asterisk, FreePBX, faxing, and a softphone, it was an almost perfect mobile system for under $500.
As I have previously stated in another thread the PIKA appliance is designed for a 100% duty cycle and has telephony interfaces designed from the ground up.
The sub-notebook form factor was not designed for this application.
Scott
aka "Skyking"
As I have stated previously, I believe the power of the PIKA comes when factored in with 4 or 8 analog ports. That is where you see a great value proposition compared with other hardware choices and the additional cost of high quality analog ports. Note how I mentioned high quality. I'm not talking about some junk clone card.
SLA is coming. Hopefully 45 days if my XML development interest stays high. After it is working on Aastra phones, I may be enticed to make it work with all BLF compatible SIP phones. It's shaping up to look pretty compelling with the ability to create groups of shared extensions and support for any type of trunk including Analog/PRI/SIP/IAX.
How will the updates work with this unit? With it not being x86, I'm guessing all updates will have to be specially configured and compiled?
PIKA is maintaining a separate project where they take updates to their PADS architecture, sync them with the FreePBX architecture, compile and distribute pre-compiled images. FreePBX can be updated using the traditional methods of a tarball installation or module-based upgrade. All FreePBX is stored in persistent memory, so upgrades to FreePBX stick on reboots.
Think of the images that PIKA provides as a Trixbox ISO.
If you want, you can also download all the source and do it yourself. It's not fun or easy, however.
re: "The PIKA appliance is designed for a 100% duty cycle..."
Scott, I guess the real question is 100% duty cycle for how long. I certainly don't profess to be an expert on duty cycles, but it sounds like you probably are. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but my recollection is that notebook drives have roughly a 20:1 MTBF advantage over SSDs when it comes to duty cycles. And notebook drives typically are up in the hundreds of thousands of hours, and most drives have the lowest MTBF of any component in any computer. Given that most years have less than 9,000 hours, I'm not sure what the basis for your claim is. These are both fairly new technologies so I guess we'll see whose machines still are running a year or two from now. By then, there will be something better that everybody will want anyway. In the meantime, I can keep a spare on the shelf and still have money left over.
Wasn't trying to start a Holy War or anything. We really wanted to use the PIKA appliance but it and the software that will run on it is severely restricted. Some might say crippled. But not me. I wouldn't say that. :-) Leaving cost and performance aside, perhaps we can all agree that the PIKA appliance is very different and lacks the flexibility that most of us have come to expect in our aggregated PBXs.
I think the hardware is very capable - for the type of implementation the appliance was designed for. My only gripe is I can't run speech on it. As far as everything else goes, FreePBX runs well on it, and all the Aastra XML applications work fine on it. It's obviously not designed to run a 100 extension phone system. If I somehow get all the stars to align and get just a little more CPU, a minimum of 1G RAM, and somehow get LumenVox to cross-compile their stuff for PPC, I would be completely happy.
I take it back, Ethan. No Speech + Dinky CPU + 256MB RAM = Crippled... IMHO.
We actually pair an inexpensive Atom solution that only handles speech recognition for customers on the PIKA appliance that want speech. Total hardware cost is around $200 and they have a dedicated box that does speech recognition. This is probably the best way to do it anyway, but we are always looking out for the customer's pocketbook, so we normally opt to run the speech engine right on their PBX.
When I was speaking of duty cycles I was focusing on cooling and power supplies.
Certainly the SS drives have a write cycle limitation.
It's certainly not a holy war for me and I am sure many people are comfortable running their PBX on a notebook. I am equally sure that having all of the tools you provide installed and integrated for $500 has tremendous value to many.
The appliance is purpose built and is basic FreePBX, my point is they are totally different animals. My intent was to point that out and we seem to have come back to that point in the discussion.
Scott
aka "Skyking"
How does Pika plan on positioning this unit? I'm guessing for offices of
ethans,
That is great news about SLA. If you say it will happen I believe you. Having said that, I have been let down several times now by much larger organizations so I am growing quite skeptical about seeing a good implementation of SLA on Asterisk. We are going on several years of promises now including the promise that came from Digium a few years back which turned out to be extremely disappointing to say the least.
Still waiting for the Aastra implementation on the Aastralink Pro 160. Again, it is just vapourware right now but sounds like it is for real and Aastra seems very serious about it.
If I had a decent implementation of SLA on FreePBX I would most certainly prefer that even if it was more expensive.
Skyking,
Maybe your doing something highly specialized but I have looked at this may times and I always come to the conclusion that laptops are simply not designed for this for several reasons. I'm sure it could work ok but a dedicated appliance is much better IMHO.
I think Scott agrees with you on the laptop point.
Mustard -
I agree with you on the laptops, take another look at my comments.
Initially Ethan's work on SLA was XML based and Aastra specific. His last statement indicates he is working on an Asterisk based Hints/Device State based solution. Very interesting.
Scott
aka "Skyking"
I only use Aastra phones so even if was using XML exclusively on Aastra I would be ok with it.
In response to the question regarding PIKA's positioning of the WARP appliance. You are certainly correct that this appliance was purpose built for the SMB. WARP performance characteristics are best described using a typical example scenario such as the following: The WARP appliance can handle 4 analog calls all writing to voicemail on the SD card while at the same time 56 SIP endpoints talk to each other (28 simultaneous SIP calls). We use PESQ measurements to determine when the call quality is starting to be effected due to load, to be specific, when the PESQ score drops below 3.7. Some will argue that the ear will only notice poor quality around 3.2-3.5. So what size office does this suit? We often reference ~50 desktops.
For more info on the WARP appliance go to www.pikawarp.org and/or www.pikatech.com
David
Member Since:
2007-01-16