How to setup a Grandstream phone as a device on UniFi Talk

howto_grandstream_device_to_unifi_talk.md

How to setup Grandstream DP750 for Unifi Talk

I've seen several posts on Reddit and other forums that say "oh you can use a grandstream phone with UniFi Talk and it's flawless". Unfortunately, I am not a VoIP engineer so it was not intuitive to me, but I got it to work. Here's how.

For this writeup, I'm using a Grandstream DP750 DECT base with a DP720 DECT wireless handset. I really wanted a wireless phone for general use in my house, but Ubiquiti doesn't make one, so I wanted to find a way. My goal is to setup UniFi Talk for my home phone solution and share a single phone number with a UniFi wired phone that sits on my office desk. As far as I know, you have to get a UniFi phone to do the initial Talk setup (though, in my tinkering, I noticed it's using a PostgreSQL database, you could probably bypass the initial setup if you knew what you were doing). I'm also using a UDM-Pro for my gateway.

Assuming your UDM-Pro management interface is on 192.168.1.1, your base station should be assigned an IP on a VLAN that can access that endpoint. UniFi Talk (which is running FreeSWITCH) is listening only on that IP on TCP and UDP port 5060. There's also an external port for communicating with UniFi's VoIP provider of choice.

root@ubnt:/# netstat -plantu | grep freeswitch | grep -v ESTAB
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.1:5060        0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8212/freeswitch
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.1:5066        0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8212/freeswitch
tcp        0      0 X.X.X.X:59411           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8212/freeswitch
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8021          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8212/freeswitch
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.1:7448        0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8212/freeswitch
udp        0      0 192.168.1.1:5060        0.0.0.0:*                           8212/freeswitch
udp        0      0 X.X.X.X:59411           0.0.0.0:*                           8212/freeswitch

Configuring Talk

Depending on how you want to manage your devices, you need to make sure you have a user for each device. This creates an extension. In my setup, I want my devices to have unique extensions, but share an external phone number. To do this, I assigned my Talk service number to a group, then put my UniFi phone extension and my new "Cordless Phone" user extension into the same group.

Last thing in the Talk web UI, we need to know which extension is assigned to the "Cordless Phone" account. Go to the account overview, and you'll see it shown there.

Several posts suggested that the SIP password for this account was actually listed on the "Manage" page of the account, but Ubiquiti must have removed that, as it is no longer there when I looked. To get the password, you'll have to SSH into the UDM-Pro. You can get that info from the main UDM-Pro settings page. Enable "SSH" and set a password using the button below the toggle.

You'll SSH in as root, using the password you just configured. Then we'll enter the UniFi-OS shell. Lastly, we'll enter a command to retrieve the SIP password for the phone account. Where I've entered 0003, you'll enter the extension for your account.

>_ ssh [email protected]
Welcome to UbiOS

By logging in, accessing, or using the Ubiquiti product, you
acknowledge that you have read and understood the Ubiquiti
License Agreement and agree to be bound by its terms.

[email protected]'s password:
  ___ ___      .__________.__
 |   |   |____ |__\_  ____/__|
 |   |   /    \|  ||  __) |  |   (c) 2010-2021
 |   |  |   |  \  ||  \   |  |   Ubiquiti Inc.
 |______|___|  /__||__/   |__|
            |_/                  http://www.ui.com

      Welcome to UniFi Dream Machine!
# unifi-os shell
root@ubnt:/# fs_cli -x "user_data [email protected] param password"
wM2B46sacGb4

Don't worry, that's not my actual password. Now we have all the info we need to configure the Grandstream device.

Configuring the Grandstream device

You'll log into the Grandstream device by browsing to the IP and logging in with the your credentials (default are admin/, where is a password on the bottom of the device). Across the top, go to "Profiles" -> "Profile 1" -> "General Settings". Here we'll configure a name for this profile and configure where the SIP server is. This will be your UDM-Pro management IP. I'm assuming the default of 192.168.1.1 here.

One last step, is to configure the SIP authentication. Go to "DECT" -> "SIP Account Settings" and configure "Account 1" with the numeric extension as the User ID and the password you retrieved earlier. You can give it a friendly name here that will show up on the screen of your phone. Once you've done that, click "Save and Apply".

If everything worked correctly (and I didn't skip a step in this documentation), after a few seconds you'll get green status indicators on the main "Status" page.

Thanks for insight, @dcode.

What I managed to test today is:

• setup a user in Talk
• get the user password in the UDM shell via ssh (e.g. fs_cli -x "user_data [email protected] param password")
• use this username/pass for a third party phone
• assign a cdm touch phone to the same user in Talk

This works, both phones are can do in-/outgoing calls and both will ring in parallel on incoming calls (obviously). While not being an "elegant" solution, it works.

Looking forward for your finds when fiddling around with FreeSWITCH ;-)

@hopfi2k, I'm a little slow on the update could you clarify the following:

1. use this username/pass for a third-party phone. I'm assuming your mean Username is the setup a user extension number? Also to use these within the third-party app?
2. assign a cdm touch phone to the same user in Talk. What are you inferring via cdm, I currently only have two devices, one is an ATA and the other is a UTP-Touch. I'm assuming that whatever this said device is assigned to the new user extension. In other posts I see that once on gets the password for the extension that they delete it, IMHO it's a visual reminder that a 3rd party device in my case it's a YeaLink W60B.

@aldridgepk how did you "I have mine assigned to a group. The group is set to ring two phones, one
UI Touch and the Grandstream."?

Hi
I added a Yealink to Unifi Talk and it works well, between extensions, outgoing calls, however when adding it to a GROUP it does not ring for incoming calls to the group. Does anyone have any recommendations? tks

Anyone have the issue where the 3rd party phones can place calls but not receive them? Calls from a Unifi phone to both a Grandstream and a Yealink go right to voicemail.

Did anyone figure this out? I tried all the device and group assignment workaround but can't get it to reliably work. I can place outgoing calls from the third-party device, but can only receive them for a limited time (which likely corresponds to the registration TTL).

Same issues here. Outbound internal calls from Yealink work perfectly but inbound go straight to the voicemail. I would really like to get this working since Ubiquiti does not have any cordless phone option.

Yeah, sorry all. Actually, my primary use case is outbound calling from my home, so my younger kids can always get in touch. I have a "someday" Todo to learn more about Freeswitch, but I just don't have the cycles right now.

Presumably, the console has another database of devices somewhere and they have a periodic sync job that is kicking out the manual entries.That or their phones have an agent periodically checking in and since the GrandStream isn't, it falls out of the list.

There is a Postgres database accessible with sudo -u postgres psql -d unifi-talk -c "SELECT * FROM device;". I have tried to add an entry to the table for the Yealink phone but unfortunately it does not show up on the device list.

A very good guide. Thank you very much.

So, any progress? :)

Well, UniFi was very kind, update to EA 3.4.3 and get native support for 3rd party phones 😉

Release Notes

Hhh I missed this. They took a very nice step :) Now it's the turn of the softphone for international use.

Thank you.

As far as I know, you have to get a UniFi phone to do the initial Talk setup (though, in my tinkering, I noticed it's using a PostgreSQL database, you could probably bypass the initial setup if you knew what you were doing).

If anyone does know what they are doing, please could you share how to do this?

yeap i have yealink devices as well and i need to setup my unifi talk but i can't add my third party phone neither can i skip the setup process.
any ideas?

I looked into the 3.4.3 release, which is now GA. To get the SIP credentials, you have to enable the Identity app software, which requires the UniFi Talk Pro Plan. That's currently $24.99 (+$15 over the base Unifi Talk subscription). I'm not sure if it's available if you're using a 3rd party SIP trunk.

In either case, you can't add a 3rd party phone without a Unifi Talk device first. Currently, the Unifi ATA is the cheapest unlocked device at $99.