I want to make a temporary answerphone which records MP3s

Question

An artistic project will encourage users to ring a number and leave a voice-mail on an automated service. These voice-mails will be collected and edited into a half-hour radio show.

I want to make a temporary system (with as little as possible programming) which will:

• Allow me to establish a public telephone number (preferably in the UK)
• Allow members of the public to call in and receive a short pre-recorded message
• Leave a message of their own after the beep.
• At the end of the project I'd like to be able to download and convert the recorded audio into a format that I can edit with a free audio-editor.

I do not mind paying to use a service if it means I can get away with doing less programming work. Also it's got to be reliable because once recorded it will be impossible to re-record the audio clips. Once set up the whole thing will run for at most 2 weeks.

I'm a python programmer with some basic familiarity with VOIP, however I'd prefer not to set up a big complex system like Asterisk since I do not ever intend to use the system again once the project is over. Whatever I do has to be really simple and disposable. Also I have access to Linux and FreeBSD systems (no Windows, sorry).

Thanks!

Answer 1

You may want to check out asterisk. I don't think it will become any easier than using an existing system.

Maybe you can find someone in the asterisk community to help set up such a system.

Answer 2

I use twilio, very easy, very fun.

Answer 3

Skype has a voicemail feature which sounds perfect for this and I suppose you would need a SkypeIn number as well

Answer 4

Take a look at Sipgate.co.uk, they provide a free UK dial in number and free incoming calls. Not so relavant for you but they also have a python api.

They are a SIP provider and there are many libraries (e.g. http://trac.pjsip.org/repos/wiki/Python_SIP_Tutorial ) for sip in python - so you could set up a python application to login to your sipgate account, pick up and incoming calls and dump the sound to a wav/mp3 whatever.