Free Skype-to-SIP Software!
We don't like Skype. Actually, that's not true. We like the concept of Skype, that is, making free calls to people via the Internet. We just don't like having to use a computer to do it. We got all excited when we read about Skype for Asterisk, thinking it would be an easy way to receive calls from our Skype-using friends, on a regular phone.
But then we kept reading and said, "Sixty-six dollars per channel!? Forget that!"
Fortunately, there is a cheaper - and in fact, free - way of accomplishing the same thing.
We accomplished this with Skype-to-SIP Software called SipToSis. SipToSis does exactly what it advertises and is exceedingly configurable - so much so that it practically made us salivate. Now, we can receive Skype calls via an IP Phone or ATA, make Skype calls using a SIP URI, trigger the phone to dial a Skype user via the computer, and even route Skype calls to voicemail if we don't pick up the phone.
We configured Skype and SipToSis as a Windows service so that Windows would automatically restart it if it was accidentally closed, and so there wouldn't be an annoying command prompt window open all the time. The fine people who wrote SipToSis also wrote a program called Appicus which allows you to run any program as a Windows service. It's low cost, but not free. So, to run Windows programs as a service we decided to use XYNTService.
We made a few changes to SipToSis' default siptosis.cfg file. Here are the changes only:
# Check every minute to be sure Skype is still here. connectorWatchDogMinutes=1 # We had to set skypeUserId to make XYNTService work. skypeUserId=mangosUserIdGoesHere # We disabled this because we don't use DTMF on Skype and it uses less CPU. enableSkypeDtmfDetector=no # If we made a Skype call on the computer, SipToSis should ring the phone and wait for us to answer before calling the remote user. JoinManualSkypeOutboundCallToSip=yes |
Here's how we configured XYNTService:
Update: We have been able to make SipToSis work with XYNTService on Windows XP, but not Windows 7. On Windows 7, we load SipToSis with Hidden Start instead of XYNTService.
[Settings] ServiceName = SipToSis CheckProcessSeconds = 300 [Process0] CommandLine = "java.exe -Xms24m -Xmx24m -Djava.library.path=. -classpath tritonus_gsm-0.3.6.jar;tritonus_share-0.3.6.jar;jmf.jar;jspeex.jar;sip.jar;ua.jar;mailapi.jar;smtp.jar;activation.jar;skype.jar;log4j-1.2.15.jar;siptosis.jar;. local.ua.SkypeUA" WorkingDir = "C:\Program Files\SipToSis" PauseStart = 1000 PauseEnd = 1000 UserInterface = No Restart = Yes UserName = Mango's Windows Username Domain = Password = Mango's Windows Password [Process1] CommandLine = "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe /minimized" WorkingDir = "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone" PauseStart = 1000 PauseEnd = 2000 UserInterface = Yes Restart = Yes UserName = Domain = Password = |
