I’ve been hard at work on my IAX client software the last couple of days. I also have re-written a lot of the code. I decided early on that I wanted to have classical VU-meters to display the in and output volume. But I don’t want them to take to much CPU time. So I made a lot of optimizations on that code. So after the rewrite I managed to lower the CPU utilisation by half. And it’s fun to do programming in Cocoa, but the framework is hard to learn by the volume of it. But slowly I’m getting more comfortable.
Compiling
The IAX client I’m writing is coming along nicely. It’s now in a state that makes the program usable. And today I made changes so I could compile a universal binary. And the program works on my PPC mac, but I use some libraries I needed to change the makefiles for, so I don’t know if they work on a Intel Mac. It would be cool if I could get the first release to support universal binaries, so hopefully I can find someone who has a developer machine, or a pc with a hacked Mac OS X for Intel on it.
Setting up SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY BLF in Asterisk@Home for Grandstream GXP-2000 phones
With the latest beta firmware in the Grandstream GXP-2000 VoIP phone, the have added support for BLF. This means that you can use the quick dial LEDs for status of extensions. You can monitor all extensions on your phone. If a extension is busy, the led for that extension is lit. You can also dial directly to the extension by pressing the dial button. Very handy.
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Application name
I now have a working IAX soft phone up and running. Answering and dialing works. The sound quality is good. And the amount of cpu usage is around three percent. But as soon as I add all the animating graphics, like sound input/output meters and stuff, that figure will go up substantially. But one of the goals is to try to avoid letting the program becoming a resource hog.
I decided to really try to stay focused on the basic stuff to really iron out the bugs/memory leaks before continuing to the fun stuff like user interface. But thanks to Project Builder, it’s easy to make a usable interface immediately.
I wanted to call the program Breaker-Breaker! but there’s already a rock band called that. And even worse, a film with Chuck Norris. Next alternative, Ten-Four. If you can think of a better name, please comment.
If I manage to keep this tempo up, I’ll have a usable beta in a couple of weeks. Touch wood.
IAX Soft Phones for Mac OS X
I’ve been looking for a softphone for Macintosh that uses IAX, but I haven’t been able to find a good one. The EyeBeam and X-lite uses sip and has stability problems so they are not an option either. So I started to write my own softphone. It’s nice to be programming in Cocoa again. But I’m becoming old, so I have to read up on programming in Cocoa again. I have a working softphone up and running already. Well, sort of. It receives calls and you can answer and talk. But I’ve only been writing on it for two days, and most of the time has been spent on installing a Subversion system on my server. As soon as I get a polished version, I’ll put up a beta program. I’m thinking of calling the program “Breaker-Breaker!” in the old CB-radio spirit. And yes, it will have the old style analog VU indicators for bandwidth and voice volume.
Update: I have released my IAX Softphone client for Mac OS X, You can read more about it here.