The VPB4 is a low cost 4 port Computer Telephony (CT) card.  The card is specifically targeted for developers of PC based Auto Attendant/ Voicemail/ IVR applications and currently runs under Linux, FreeBSD and Windows NT.  The driver software is open source!

Pricing

Prices are in US$ and exclude delivery and local taxes.
 

Number of Units	Price Per Unit
1-10	US$400
11-100	US$350
100+	US$330

Open Source

We have released the source code for the VPB4 driver (under the GPL License), including:

• Windows NT user mode and kernel mode driver API here (NT binaries including NT/Linux user guide here).
• Linux, FreeBSD user mode and Kernel mode driver here.

Current projects:

• Integrating the VPB4 with a script based (open source) IVR server (ACS).  This powerful application enables IVR systems to be created using a simple script based language.  ACS is one of the easiest, most powerful ways to create IVR systems.  Currently, the VPB4 is integrated with ACS 0.3.2.  Combining the VPB4 with ACS enables IVR systems such as voicemail or ACDs to be created quickly at the cost of the PC & the VPB4 hardware.  The VPB driver software and ACS are both open source and free!
• A 4-port Voice Over IP (VOIP) gateway running H323 is currently under development.  This will enable a 4-port VOIP gateway to built for the price of a PC and a VPB4 card.

VPB4 Open Source Project

The VPB4 Open Source Project is being hosted on Voxilla please contact David Rowe at [email protected] for any queries or technical support.  The source code is commented and some documentation exists.  We are also happy to answer any questions about the driver VPB4 code.

If you are interested in Linux telephony and Open Source telephony we recommend the Voxilla, Linux Telephony and Open Phone sites.

The NT Binaries (including API documentation in Windows Help file format) available here.  See the Voxilla page for the latest Linux version.

Features

• Four terminating analogue telephone ports. These ports are functionally and electrically equivalent to a telephone and are capable of terminating lines from an external exchange or PBX.
• Single fixed point DSP that performs control, signal processing, and Host PC communications functions.
• Comprehensive API
• Call Progress Analysis.
• DTMF detection and generation.
• User defined tone generation and detection.
• Voice compression modes: ADPCM at 32 kbit/s, 64 kbit/s A-law and mu-law PCM, 128kbit/s linear PCM.
• Emissions and Australian Communications Authority (ACA) compliant.
• DSP echo cancellation - ideal for VOIP

Minor Problems

There are a few problems with the VPB4 that may affect it's suitability for your application.  All of these will be fixed in the next version, but that will have to wait until we sell enough of the current cards to fund further development!

• ISA Bus:  The current version of the VPB4 is ISA based, the next version will be PCI.
• Caller ID:  The current VPB4 hardware does not support an on-hook audio path, and therefore cannot support caller ID.
• FCC Compliance: The VPB4 has only been certified for use with the Australian telephone system.  Although the hardware would pass FCC compliance easily, we have not had it tested yet.  However, it is still possible to use the VPB4 outside Australia if connected to a PBX, rather than outside lines, as is common for many CT applications.  As soon as demand is high enough we will have the card certified.
• Hardware and Firmware:  We are not releasing the hardware design and firmware source code, apart from those details necessary to work with the driver code.  We have to keep something to our self!  However, we are happy to consider any firmware and hardware mod requests (no promises though!).

In April 2001 we hope to release the next version of the VPB4, new features include:

• PCI bus.
• Caller ID.
• Around US$450 in Quantity 1.

Please contact us if you are interested in this new card: [email protected]
 

Software Downloads

VPB4 SDK version 1.1  for Windows NT 4.0 here.