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.

First you need to upgrade your firmware on your Grandstream GXP-2000 phone. You can download the v1.0.1.13 beta firmware here. There have been some reports of problems with this firmware, but I haven’t had any problems with it so far.

To upload the firmware to the phone you need a TFTP-server. I used TftpServer for Mac OS X. There are similar programs for Windows, like this one. But I haven’t tried them.

unpack the firmware, and put the files boot55.bin and gxp2000.bin in the root directory of your TFTP server. Now you need to tell your Grandstream phone where it can find the new firmware. So log in to your Grandstream phone by pointing your web browser to the ip of the phone (if you look on the phone display you can find the ip-number). Log in with the password (the standard is “admin”) you configured the phone with. Select “Advanced Settings” and select Via TFTP server under Firmware upgrade. You need to enter the ip-number of the computer running your TFTP server. In my case its 192.168.1.223.

Grandstreamupgrade1

Press the update button at the bottom of the web page and then press reboot. If everything is working your phone should reboot, and then the status light should blink while it downloads the firmware from your TFTP server. The whole upgrade process takes a minute or two.

When the phone has booted up again you can check the current firmware version by pressing the MENU button and then the UP button on your phone until you see Firmware displayed on your phone. Press the MENU button to display the firmware version. You should now have a phone with v1.0.1.13 of the firmware.

Ok, so now it’s time to get your Asterisk@Home server configured. Start by logging in via SSH or directly on a the Asterisk server. Then you need to write the following in the terminal.

 cd /etc/asterisk 
 nano extensions_custom.conf

I have three extensions I want to have status information on: 200 is my wireless phone 201 is my wifes wireless phone 202 is a phone in my office

So to add so that I can get status info about these extensions, I’ll add the following in the [ext-local-custom] context.

[ext-local-custom] exten => 200,hint,SIP/200
exten => 201,hint,SIP/201
exten => 202,hint,SIP/202

Press ctrl-x and press yes to save the file. Now we need to tell Asterisk that this is the context to give status on.

Write the following in the terminal window

nano sip.conf

And add the following line under the [general] context.

subscribecontext=ext-local-custom

Press ctrl-x and press y to save your changes.

Now you need to restart your asterisk server by writing the following:

 asterisk -r restart gracefully

The asterisk server should now restart.

Where now ready to configure the Grandstream phone to display status for these lines. So log into the Grandstream phone with your web browser again. Go to Basic Settings and set up your extensions. Here you can see how my settings would look like.

Grandstreamblfsetting Note that the keymode is Asterisk BLF and not Quickdial. Press the update button and restart the phone.

Now try to dial from one of your extensions and the LED on your Grandstream phone should light up.

Yay!