How to Install Asterisk 18 and FreePBX 16 on Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye (64-bit & 32-bit)

Deploying Asterisk 18 LTS alongside the modern FreePBX 16 administrative interface on Raspberry Pi OS (Debian 11 Bullseye) enables a carrier-grade VoIP telephony platform on energy-efficient ARM hardware. This guide provides the complete setup for both 64-bit (aarch64) and 32-bit (armhf) architectures.

OS: Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye • Components: Asterisk 18.x, FreePBX 16, Node.js 14, MariaDB 10.5, Apache 2.4

1. Installing System Packages & PHP 7.4

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libssl-dev libncurses5-dev libnewt-dev   libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev uuid-dev mariadb-server mariadb-client   libjansson-dev libedit-dev sox libsox-fmt-all git curl subversion

# Install PHP 7.4 modules required by FreePBX 16
sudo apt-get install -y apache2 php php-cli php-mysql php-pear php-gd php-mbstring   php-intl php-xml php-curl php-zip

2. Building Asterisk 18 LTS

cd /usr/src
sudo wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/asterisk-18-current.tar.gz
sudo tar -zxf asterisk-18-current.tar.gz
cd asterisk-18.*

sudo contrib/scripts/get_mp3_source.sh
sudo contrib/scripts/install_prereq install

sudo ./configure --with-pjproject-bundled --with-jansson-bundled
sudo make menuselect.makeopts
sudo menuselect/menuselect --enable format_mp3 menuselect.makeopts
sudo make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install
sudo make config
sudo ldconfig

3. Installing FreePBX 16

cd /usr/src
sudo wget http://mirror.freepbx.org/modules/packages/freepbx/freepbx-16.0-latest.tgz
sudo tar -zxf freepbx-16.0-latest.tgz
cd freepbx
sudo ./install -n

How to Set Up a Samba Network Storage Drive on Raspberry Pi for Hikvision IP Cameras

Hikvision value IP cameras (such as the IPC-B120, IPC-B121H, and IPC-B120-D-W) feature onboard motion detection, infrared night vision, and H.265+ compression, but lack internal hard drives. Rather than purchasing an expensive commercial NVR, you can attach an external USB hard disk to a Raspberry Pi configured as an SMB/CIFS Network Attached Storage (NAS) target for continuous or motion-triggered video archiving.

Stack: Raspberry Pi 4 • External USB HDD (ext4) • Samba Server (SMBv2/v3) • Hikvision Storage Management

1. Installing and Configuring Samba on the Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin -y

# Create recording directory on mounted external drive
sudo mkdir -p /media/cctv_storage/hikvision
sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /media/cctv_storage/hikvision
sudo chmod -R 0777 /media/cctv_storage/hikvision

2. Samba Share Definition (/etc/samba/smb.conf)

Hikvision firmware requires specific Samba dialect and locking settings to format network drives successfully:

[hikvision]
   comment = Hikvision CCTV Storage
   path = /media/cctv_storage/hikvision
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   guest ok = yes
   read only = no
   create mask = 0777
   directory mask = 0777
   force user = nobody

Restart Samba:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

3. Mounting the Drive in Hikvision Web GUI

1. Log into your camera's web interface → Configuration → Storage → Storage Management → Net HDD.
2. Set Type to NAS / SMB/CIFS, enter the Raspberry Pi's IP address, set File Path to /hikvision, and save.
3. Under HDD Management, select the newly added network disk and click Format / Init. Once status changes to Normal, motion recordings will save directly to your Pi.