Raspberry PI VIA APC

[ccwalker]

We are exploring the possibilities in building our own system. My consultant suggested VICIdial for our needs. When discussing the Agent workstations, he told me that they were using intel boxes with linux installed and there is nothing special about them as they do not use programs other than the web browser. This made me wonder about hardware for agents. I briefly thought about thin clients, but as other in this forum have mentioned, they have their own set of issues due to the fact that they are dependent on a server in addition to having their own operating system. In my opinion, that is a disadvantage due to the fact if the server crashes, all agents go down.

Being a computer hobbyist, I thought about some of the lo cost budget PCs on the market such as the Raspberry PI and the VIA APC to use as the agent hardware for several reasons:

Less power consumption (5 Watts at 5 and 12 volts respectively)
Less heat dissipation
Less noise
Less components, uses an sdcard instead of a hard drive
Size
Price - almost disposable at $35 / $50

We are in the Philippines where power outages are pretty common and we know we will be using generator power quite a bit so running cooler with less wattage is a big concern.

Any thoughts on this idea?

By the way... I have one of my guys installing the server software on a box today. He has access to a PI to test it out and see if the browser in the PI will work. I will report my findings here.

[williamconley]

as long as it will run a fairly standard web browser and a soft phone, you should be ok. if you can use hard phones, you're even better. but in most cases recently, the cheap off-lease dells make decent agent workstations and probably cost as little as a PI (and will run full stock linux OS without any finagling).

[ccwalker]

Thanks for the reply. I was planning on hard phones. As I said we are setting up a box to test the PI. I will post results. I am laeaning towards the VIA ACP. How do those off-lease dells compare power-wise? shipping is a concern for me too. I can have all 25 small units shipped here to the Philippines in the space of one desktop.

Your comments encourage me to experiment with this train of thought to see what we can do.

[DomeDan]

Sounds like a good idea. What software will you be using?
I would recommend you using Raspbian, and the software something like openbox, fbpanel, ekiga, iceweasel(with addon Public Fox)
The agent station I've set up (dell/hp/compaq -stations, P4, 512Mb) uses those softwares and running Debian.

[iainpg]

We have tried Raspberry Pi with no luck (still a cool piece of kit) / off lease PC's and hard phones are the best imho

[williamconley]

What, you couldn't get a web browser to work in it?