Freeswitch stable on embedded devices?
Hello I'd' like to hear from people who run Freeswitch on embedded devices such as the Seagate DockStar, the SheevaPlug, etc. I intend to connect the device to the PSTN through an Obi110 VoIP gateway along with an ITSP over the Net, and support up to 30 internal extensions. Is Freeswitch on such small hardware rock-solid, is it easy to recompile for such non-x86 platforms, or should I get a regular x86 host like the Asus EeeBoxPC (www.asus.com/Eee/)? Thank you. -- View this message in context: http://freeswitch-users.2379917.n2.nabble.com/Freeswitch-stable-on-embedded-... Sent from the freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
I've been running FreeSwitch on a Dockstar for about 2 years now, and, yes, it is rock solid running on this tiny device. At one point, I noticed that it had been running un-interrupted for nearly 6 months. I use it with several voip service providers, and Google Voice integration works perfectly. However, this is just my home PBX, with a max of 4 concurrent calls. I haven't done any scalability testing. Also, there are some things that don't work well: a) When I try to use FLITE (the text-to-speech module) on the dockstar or a pogoplug, the CPU usage shoots up to 100%, resulting audio is choppy, and any ongoing calls also get choppy. I haven't taken a close look at the source code, but I suspect FLITE is using floating-point math. The poor little dockstars and pogoplugs don't have floating-point processors, so any floating-point math eats up a whole lot of CPU time. (I just glanced at the source, and I see they define M_PI = 3.14159. So, yes, floating point math.) c) Music-on-hold works fine. But streaming audio files using Session.streamFile() or Session.say() will sometimes have very choppy audio (but without the extreme CPU usage that FLITE causes). I'm trying to figure out this problem as we speak..... So, basically, if you're using FreeSwitch as a simple home PBX, the dockstar and pogoplug are wonderful devices to use. But if you're going to make use of the more interesting features of FreeSwitch, you will definitely want to invest in an x86 or similar platform.
Thanks Tom. I won't use FLITE, but I'll have to check which features in Freeswitch require floating-point math to make sure I won't have that problem. Do you use uncompressed files for MoH or MP3, which could explain the chopiness? Do you recompile Freeswitch yourself for the Dockstar? If yes, is that hard to do? I need to make sure I'm able to update the devices in case serious bugs or useful features come up once they're out in the field. Thank you. -- View this message in context: http://freeswitch-users.2379917.n2.nabble.com/Freeswitch-stable-on-embedded-... Sent from the freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Do you use uncompressed files for MoH or MP3, which could explain the
chopiness?
Nope, just the standard WAV files that come with the git. And I'm using the correct bitrate, so no trans-coding issues.
Do you recompile Freeswitch yourself for the Dockstar? If yes, is that hard
to do? I need to make sure I'm able to update the devices in case serious bugs or useful features come up once they're out in the field.
Yes, compiling on the dockstar is just as easy as on any other platform, once you have all the requisite packages installed. The smaller Linux distributions made for these devices don't contain every package that the major (desktop) distributions have. A quick web search will turn up a list for you. Everything builds fine on the dockstar with only 128megs of RAM. Except, coincidentally enough, FLITE, which needs about 450megs of addressable memory to build successfully. So to compile that module, you need to create a swap file of at least 350 megs.
You are still transcoding from .wav to ulaw alaw etc. You can work around that by not transcoding on the fly. Using media bugs is transcoding. I don't know if there's a good work around for that though. -BDF On May 21, 2012 8:55 PM, "Tom C" <mel0torme@gmail.com> wrote:
Do you use uncompressed files for MoH or MP3, which could explain the
chopiness?
Nope, just the standard WAV files that come with the git. And I'm using the correct bitrate, so no trans-coding issues.
Do you recompile Freeswitch yourself for the Dockstar? If yes, is that hard
to do? I need to make sure I'm able to update the devices in case serious bugs or useful features come up once they're out in the field.
Yes, compiling on the dockstar is just as easy as on any other platform, once you have all the requisite packages installed. The smaller Linux distributions made for these devices don't contain every package that the major (desktop) distributions have. A quick web search will turn up a list for you.
Everything builds fine on the dockstar with only 128megs of RAM. Except, coincidentally enough, FLITE, which needs about 450megs of addressable memory to build successfully. So to compile that module, you need to create a swap file of at least 350 megs.
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Just a quick note about embedded platforms and FreeSWITCH, git head compiles with uClibc as the libc just fine. There were a few changes that broke successful compilation of FreeSWITCH, but they have since been fixed. This statement is only applicable given if the all available options of uClibc is present/enabled. This means IPv6 support, RPC support and a few other obsolete BSD, SuSv3. SuSv4 legacy functions was enabled in my uClibc build when I performed the testing. On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Brian Foster <bdfoster@endigotech.com> wrote:
You are still transcoding from .wav to ulaw alaw etc. You can work around that by not transcoding on the fly.
Using media bugs is transcoding. I don't know if there's a good work around for that though.
-BDF
On May 21, 2012 8:55 PM, "Tom C" <mel0torme@gmail.com> wrote:
Do you use uncompressed files for MoH or MP3, which could explain the chopiness?
Nope, just the standard WAV files that come with the git. And I'm using the correct bitrate, so no trans-coding issues.
Do you recompile Freeswitch yourself for the Dockstar? If yes, is that hard to do? I need to make sure I'm able to update the devices in case serious bugs or useful features come up once they're out in the field.
Yes, compiling on the dockstar is just as easy as on any other platform, once you have all the requisite packages installed. The smaller Linux distributions made for these devices don't contain every package that the major (desktop) distributions have. A quick web search will turn up a list for you.
Everything builds fine on the dockstar with only 128megs of RAM. Except, coincidentally enough, FLITE, which needs about 450megs of addressable memory to build successfully. So to compile that module, you need to create a swap file of at least 350 megs.
_________________________________________________________________________ Professional FreeSWITCH Consulting Services: consulting@freeswitch.org http://www.freeswitchsolutions.com
FreeSWITCH-powered IP PBX: The CudaTel Communication Server http://www.cudatel.com
Official FreeSWITCH Sites http://www.freeswitch.org http://wiki.freeswitch.org http://www.cluecon.com
Join Us At ClueCon - Aug 7-9, 2012
FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org
_________________________________________________________________________ Professional FreeSWITCH Consulting Services: consulting@freeswitch.org http://www.freeswitchsolutions.com
FreeSWITCH-powered IP PBX: The CudaTel Communication Server http://www.cudatel.com
Official FreeSWITCH Sites http://www.freeswitch.org http://wiki.freeswitch.org http://www.cluecon.com
Join Us At ClueCon - Aug 7-9, 2012
FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org
participants (4)
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Brian Foster
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curriegrad2004
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GillesToo
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Tom C