chan_dongle channel driver for Huawei UMTS cards

WARNING:

This channel driver is in alpha stage. I am not responsible if this channel driver will eat your money on your SIM card or do any unpredicted things.

Please use a recent Linux kernel, 2.6.33+ recommended. If you use FreeBSD, 8.0+ recommended.

This channel driver should work with the folowing UMTS cards:

• Huawei E153
• Huawei E155X
• Huawei E156G
• Huawei E160
• Huawei EG162
• Huawei E169
• Huawei E1692
• Huawei E171
• Huawei E175X
• Huawei E1762
• Huawei E180
• Huawei E261
• Huawei K3520(not to confuse with K3520-z) rebranded E169
• Huawei K3565(not to confuse with K3565-z) rebranded E160
• Huawei K3715
• Huawei K3765 rebranded E1762

Check complete list in: http://wiki.e1550.mobi/doku.php?id=requirements#list_of_supported_models

About USB hubs

Usb hubs chaining depth is 5. Device count (theoretically) is 127 (hubs + dongles).

USB 2.0 - up to 480Mbit/s

For voice call feature, it's highly recommended the use of USB version 2.0 One chan_dongle data stream may take 500kbit usb bandwidth (250kbit per direction) without usb overhead, 23KiB steady. Plan accordingly.

USB 1.1 can be work with USB 1.1 dongles - up to 12Mbit/s

USB 3.0 working, but have limited number of devices per root hub - up to 5000Mbit/s

Power specs

According to vendor specs, most usb modems have:

5V/500mA → 2.5 W Almost every computer has USB ports where you can plug devices such as pen drives, bluetooth dongles, portable hard disks, etc. 3G modems can also be plugged, but power source may be a serious limitation. If your computer has several USB ports, you must check it can deliver all the power needed for your devices at the same time.

Normally, USB ports can deliver only 500 mA, so if you have more than one modem (or other hungry devices) plugged, it's possible you get stuck with strange problems.

Also, USB hubs can be a source of problems if you connect more than one 3G modem. 500 mA is not enough current for 2 or more dongles. In this case, external powered USB hub is recommended to avoid strange behavior, but be very careful with this, not any model is ok for this task. Some of them have serious problems with RF interferences from GSM side, making impossible to use chan_dongle.

Before using the channel driver make sure to:

• Disable PIN code on your SIM card

Supported features:

• Place voice calls and terminate voice calls
• Send SMS and receive SMS
• Send and receive USSD commands / messages

Some useful AT commands:

AT+CCWA=0,0,1                   #disable call-waiting
AT+CFUN=1,1                     #reset dongle
AT^CARDLOCK="<code>"            #unlock code
AT^SYSCFG=13,0,3FFFFFFF,0,3     #modem 2G only, automatic search any band, no roaming
AT^U2DIAG=0                     #enable modem function

Building:

$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure --with-astversion=13.7
$ make

If you run a different version of Asterisk, you'll need to update the 13.7 as appropriate, obviously.

If you did not make install Asterisk in the usual location and configure cannot find the asterisk header files in /usr/include/asterisk, you may optionally pass --with-asterisk=PATH/TO/INCLUDE.

Here is an example for the dialplan:

WARNING: This example uses the raw SMS message passed to System() directly. No sane person would do that with untrusted data without escaping/removing the single quotes.

[dongle-incoming]
exten => sms,1,Verbose(Incoming SMS from ${CALLERID(num)} ${BASE64_DECODE(${SMS_BASE64})})
exten => sms,n,System(echo '${STRFTIME(${EPOCH},,%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S)} - ${DONGLENAME} - ${CALLERID(num)}: ${BASE64_DECODE(${SMS_BASE64})}' >> /var/log/asterisk/sms.txt)
exten => sms,n,Hangup()

exten => ussd,1,Verbose(Incoming USSD: ${BASE64_DECODE(${USSD_BASE64})})
exten => ussd,n,System(echo '${STRFTIME(${EPOCH},,%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S)} - ${DONGLENAME}: ${BASE64_DECODE(${USSD_BASE64})}' >> /var/log/asterisk/ussd.txt)
exten => ussd,n,Hangup()

exten => s,1,Dial(SIP/2001@othersipserver)
exten => s,n,Hangup()

[othersipserver-incoming]

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/r1/${EXTEN})
exten => _X.,n,Hangup

exten => *#123#,1,DongleSendUSSD(dongle0,${EXTEN})
exten => *#123#,n,Answer()
exten => *#123#,n,Wait(2)
exten => *#123#,n,Playback(vm-goodbye)
exten => *#123#,n,Hangup()

exten => _#X.,1,DongleSendSMS(dongle0,${EXTEN:1},"Please call me",1440,yes)
exten => _#X.,n,Answer()
exten => _#X.,n,Wait(2)
exten => _#X.,n,Playback(vm-goodbye)
exten => _#X.,n,Hangup()

You can also use this:

Call using a specific group:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/g1/${EXTEN})

Call using a specific group in round robin:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/r1/${EXTEN})

Call using a specific dongle:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/dongle0/${EXTEN})

Call using a specific provider name:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/p:PROVIDER NAME/${EXTEN})

Call using a specific IMEI:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/i:123456789012345/${EXTEN})

Call using a specific IMSI prefix:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Dongle/s:25099203948/${EXTEN})

How to store your own number:

dongle cmd dongle0 AT+CPBS=\"ON\"
dongle cmd dongle0 AT+CPBW=1,\"+123456789\",145

Other CLI commands:

dongle reset <device>
dongle restart gracefully <device>
dongle restart now <device>
dongle restart when convenient <device>
dongle show device <device>
dongle show devices
dongle show version
dongle sms <device> number message
dongle ussd <device> ussd
dongle stop gracefully <device>
dongle stop now <device>
dongle stop when convenient <device>
dongle start <device>
dongle restart gracefully <device>
dongle restart now <device>
dongle restart when convenient <device>
dongle remove gracefully <device>
dongle remove now <device>
dongle remove when convenient <device>
dongle reload gracefully
dongle reload now
dongle reload when convenient

For reading installation notes please look to INSTALL file.

Gain control and Jitter buffer

In order to perform good quality calls you will need to take care of:

• Automatic gain control:

chan_dongle does not control the gain of the audio stream it receive. This result of Alice hearing Bob's voice loud and noisy. It is possible to manually manage the gain in dongle.conf but the better option is by far to apply automatic gain control with the dialplan function AGC.

• Jitter buffer:

Since asterisk 12 it is no longer possible to enable Jitter buffer in dongle.conf it has to be applied in the dialplan. The lack of Jitter buffer result in severe loss in the transport of the voice from Bob to Alice.

Dialplan example

To set JITTERBUFFER and AGC in the dialplan on the appropriate channel regardless of who is initiating the call we will have to use the "b" option of Dial:

b( context^exten^priority )

Before initiating an outgoing call, Gosub to the specified location using the newly created channel.

The Gosub will be executed for each destination channel."

[from-dongle]
; This will be executed by an indbound Dongle channel ( call initiated on the dongle side )
exten => _[+0-9].,1,Dial(SIP/bob,b(from-dongle^outbound^1)) ;

; This will be executed by an outbound SIP channel ( channel generated by dial )
exten => outbound,1,Set(JITTERBUFFER(adaptive)=default)
same => n,Set(AGC(rx)=4000)
same => n,Return()

[from-sip]
; This will be executed by an inbound SIP channel ( call initiated on the SIP side )
exten => _[+0-9].,1,Set(JITTERBUFFER(adaptive)=default)
same => n,Set(AGC(rx)=4000)
same => n,Dial(Dongle/i:${IMEI_OF_MY_DONGLE}/${NUMBER_OF_BOB}) 

Note: To use automatic gain control dialplan function (AGC) you will need to compile Asterisk with func_speex ( see in menuselect ). On raspberry Pi you will need to compile and install speex and speexdsp yourself, the version of speex provided by the depos does not support AGC. (because compiled with fixed point instead of floating point) see: HOWTO

For additional information about Huawei dongle usage look to chan_dongle Wiki at http://wiki.e1550.mobi and chan_dongle project home at https://github.com/wdoekes/asterisk-chan-dongle/