I have used IP Phones to support some of our public service events in the past, but yesterday we put a new "twist" on the use of our phones. In this situation, we only needed point to point backup comms between our communications trailer and the bike ride director. We setup a "portable" MESH station with an AirRouter AR and a Grandstream GXP1400. The portable station was powered with a 10,000 mah 5 volt cellphone battery pack, which is known to be able to run this combination for over 10 hours. (Both IP phone and ARAR operate on 5V). Total current draw on this package is around 800mA.
We established a "call" between the portable station in a nearby school cafeteria and my GXP1400 in my RV and placed both phones on "mute". Whenever we needed to talk to each other, we simply "unmuted" our phones. The connection lasted for about 7 hours without having to "redial"! I changed the configuration of the connected MESH nodes, rebooting and changing channels and the like but the phones seemed to maintain their connection!
Next time I will look at some simple "conference" capability in the phones without using a SIP server to add a 3rd phone in the mix. Of course the plan is to install a SIP server in the RV ( which I already have), which will allow a larger conference connection between multiple phones (more than 2 point to point).
Just thought you would be interested in our experience!
How do do you like the 1400s?
Mark N2MH in NJ & SC as well as Kent KL5T in Anchorage AK and I converse on a regular basis (almost daily) over our SouthMesh network using both of these phones (1400 and 3240 on my end). The 3240 is far superior in call quality, but don't get me wrong - the 1400 is a good phone as well, with 2-line capability. Both of these phones as well as a number of other phones on our system are provisioned and associated with the N2MH SIP server in NJ full time. We will be adding a 2nd and possibly a 3rd SIP/PBX server sometime in the near future to our system.