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Trixbox and home PBX systems

Recently, I have decided to get some IP phones and setup my own PBX system at home so that my wife and I can more easily communicate on the different floors. (Mainly when I'm down in the basement and shes on the top floor) I also had some added goals of having using the pbx system as an interface to my future home automation system, and then there is always the added bonus of becoming more familiar and learning about a different technology. I knew that asterisk is the most widely used/talked about free PBX system, but I had also heard about how difficult it was to setup and configure. This led me to search for an easier way or prepackaged system with asterisk.

Enter trixbox. Fromally Asterisk@Home, trixbox is a free CentOS based installation that comes pre-loaded with asterisk, FreePBX (the wui for configuring asterisk), as well as more custom wui aspects that make using the system much more user friendly. When I had tried setting up a custom system on my own, after an hour or two, I hadn't gotten very far. Trixbox installed in about 30 minutes and as soon as it came up, all I had to do was add an extension and it was working!

So far, I'm really liking trixbox. I currently have a Cisco 7940 using the SIP firmware to connect to it, as well as a softphone for testing. Trixbox's documentation seems to be were its lacking. It feels very hard to find, and rather lacking. The community forums have much more information, and you'll probably be able to find your answer there, but it will take some digging. I plan on switching over the 7940 to using the SCCP firmware (as I like the features better), and trying to get that working with Trixbox, and eventually getting the whole thing to talk to the outside world.