Asterisk/PIAF VOIP version recommendations?

[JimS]

Quite a few years ago I set up an asterisk VOIP box and fiddled a bit with it.  Now I am looking to drop my POTS line and keep my number.  Thinking of porting it to Vitelity that offers a bring your own device option.
 
I followed PIAF for a while back when (PBX In a flash) which had a lot of features but they continually rolled out new versions with various names some were colors.  Looks like the landscape has changed a bit.  I don't want anything too leading edge but something that will work for at least a few years without much tweaking.  I would like to do some programming myself too but nothing too involved.  Will probably get started with just an old Obi110 with my current phones so I can bring up the asterisk system at my own speed.
 
All that said I am trying to figure out which to do.  It would be nice to run on a Linux box I am already running 24/7 for other things but I suppose I could do a Raspberry Pi for this (although they tend to have SD card crashes at inconvenient times when run continuously. 
 
Might just start with plan Asterisk on my Ubuntu box.  Multiple caller ID lookup and a receptionist would be nice.  Maybe the Annoyatron or Lenny for telemarketers. 
 
Anyone up on PIAF or whatever the replacement might be?

 

[wkearney99]

Following...

I did some similar tinkering with PIAF but didn't put it into regular use.

A Raspberry Pi 4 will boot straight from a USB drive now.  I have some that have been running from Corsair X6 and X8 USB drives.  No troubles.  On older pi you could do a hybrid boot, start on the microSD and switch over to a USB drive.  Which worked, provided you didn't trying to eek out anything extra from the sd card other than booting.

It's always been my opinion that microSD cards were never meant for being OS drives, and cheap ones even less so.  

When I tinkered with PIAF I was thinking of using an IP phone setup but the stumbling blocks of getting wife/child to use it just didn't seem to make it worth the chore.  I went with some Panasonic cordless handsets instead.  12 handsets and one wired base handset, two POTS line support and station-to-station intercom.  It has their link2cell feature, and it works, but I'm the only one that bothers to use it. 

 

[JimS]

I have some older Obi boxes that I could use for extensions using regular POTS phones.  That's the plan.  Need to make it easy for the wife for good SAF.    I suppose I should investigate other schemes for the Pi - I have several Pi3 and Pi2.  No Pi4 yet.  I put them on a UPS.  They are wired back to the router so am running 12V power supplies off the UPS and then regulating down to 5V at the Pi.  It works well and avoids SD corruption due to short power loss from time to time.
 
Will just do a VOIP to POTS for starters and fool with Asterisk when I can.  Some have recommended I set up a virtual box to run PIAF in.  Don't know much about that so I will need to read up on that.

 

[sic0048]

I don't remember if I am on V13 or v14.  Either way it's pretty old.  I run it on a virtual box on the same computer that runs my CQC and SageTV system.  That computer has to run 24/7 anyway.  I have the computer set up to automatically log into a specific user if it reboots, and the virtual box starts automatically as well.  It works well.
 
I initially started out with an Obi100 (I think) and mostly analog phones.  I slowly migrated over to all digital phones through the years.  Honestly while we still have a cheap VOIP phone service (mainly for E911 service - especially when we had small children), we don't use our home phone at all.  We do use the "hands free" intercom feature all the time however!  It's so much more useful than the old "analog" wall box style intercoms (which my parents actually still have/use in their home).