Adventures in development, circuits, creativity, and questionable life choices.
As I was dabbling in some POTS hardware and PBX systems, I was on the lookout for analog telephone adaptors.
By chance, a fellow member of our local hackerspace happened to have a cleanout session at work.
Among the "things to be thrown out" were a couple of Cisco ATA186 analog telephone adaptors.
The PSU's were missing, but since they're just standard 5 volt DC PSU's, it's fairly trivial to build one from a standard USB-A brick.
These adaptors just require 5 volts and 2 amps, so a common, somewhat decent brick should suffice.
Of course, by default, these devices run the so-called "SCCP" or "skinny" firmware which is used for Cisco's proprietary phone manager and PBX systems.
Since my plan is to use them with open source PBX systems, I would much prefer to use SIP (Session Initiation Protocol).
That way, these old devices which many regard as "e-waste" now can still be useful in some setups.
As it took me a while to figure out how to flash these devices, I'm writing this blog post to share the (somewhat surprisingly easy) method to do just that.
It's been long overdue, but I'm releasing the sources for purrChestrion today. At this point the HW/FW is pretty much done, and since I'm working on plenty of other projects, I'm giving this to the community.
I've always had a soft spot for interesting synthesizers and toys that make music (or in some cases, just noise). The Meowsic keyboard, being a fairly popular kids keyboard that meows when you play it, has been on my radar for a while.