Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Having trouble placing or receiving calls or using your voicemail system on Ooma Telo VoIP Phones? Post your questions here.
oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm
Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:10 am

No luck recreating the problem. Ooma logs all the incoming calls, including the one where panel picks up with modem negotiation noise. Line is fine afterwards.

This is different than when problem occurs, which only shows one incoming call. The next call in, a minute later, is the ADT robocall about line problems.

I've disabled answering machine defeat on the panel anyway since it's an occasional annoyance to real callers and what you say makes sense as there's no need to call the panel except to make a remote initiated configuration change.

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:32 am

4/18/19 - just happened again. Incoming call; 1 minute later ADT reports phone line problem. I call home and sure enough, Ooma voicemail is picking up after six rings rather than my house machine which answers after 4. Remotely reset the power on the Telo and voila, house machine answering again. ADT phone line test shows line good again.

Behavior I documented previously indicated this problem likely not due to ADT Answering Machine Defeat function. Since I disable that and problem has reoccurred, it is definitively not the problem.

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:35 pm

4/24/19 - happened again; slightly different behavior.
Alarm VM indicating failure. [new] This time there was no incoming triggering call (also, nothing outbound).
After about 10 minutes from failure start I picked up handset, there was dial tone, but attempting to dial resulted in what I call "Telo beeps". Tried a different handset, same thing. [new] Telo flower was pulsing red (has been blue in the past). Rather than power cycling the Telo as usual, I just unpluged and plugged in the phone jack on the back that goes to house wiring (alarm, then house wiring). Flower changed from red to blue. For a minute or two dialtone on house lines was replaced by busy signal. Then phones working again.

I recorded the Telo beeps. Hopefully the interested can access it here: Title is "Ooma.m4a"
https://buffalo.box.com/s/zxk5qkf06jn7b ... mv28snyvp9

Separately, I have seen in outgoing logs an occasional call from my alarm panel to the central station. These last about 23 sec. Assume this is periodic call-in connectivity reporting being successful. Not associated with the failure mode I'm looking at.

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:45 am

I did some more digging on the alarm side looking at system events recorded by ADT from my panel over the last 90 days. The panel does call in on the phone line about once a month, which generates a report code "IN-TIMER TEST (zone E602)". E602 translates to "Periodic Test" in Ademco report jargon. This test is accompanied by an outbound call from the panel to ADT in the Ooma call logs. These tests complete normally and haven't been taking place when the fault I'm chasing has occurred.

When the fault does occur, the panel reports (via cell connection) "CF-TELCO LN 1 FAULT (zone E351)" and that generates the call from ADT to my home phone which lands in Ooma VM and I get a txt because my home answering machine doesn't see it.

murphy
Posts:7554
Joined:Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:49 pm
Location:Pennsylvania

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by murphy » Thu Apr 25, 2019 7:30 am

An E602 report every 28 days is standard procedure.

You can take ADT out of the loop until the Ooma problem is located and fixed by changing register *92 to 0,0.
The panel will stop monitoring the phone line which means no phone line fault reports. If Ooma downloads new firmware the line is going to be dead during the install and restart time.

My system has been set to 0,0 since 2008 and it's on a budget Verizon copper landline.

Consider changing the voice callback from ADT to a different number like your cellphone.

My Verizon phone line is for exclusive use of the alarm system. A call to it does not ring any phones in my house.
Customer since January 2009
Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety Phone
Telo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:55 am

The catch here is that I only learn about the failure when a) the alarm panel tells me of the problem because it's monitoring the line, b) someone calls and leaves a VM with Ooma because the calls aren't getting through to my home answering machine - but that can also occur because of spam blocking, or c) I try to dial out and get those weird tones in my previous post (have you ever heard anything like them that you can identify? Doesn't sound like any modem negotiation tone I've ever heard before).

Of those three, option a) means the least actual downtime since I'm notified within a minute of the failure and can power cycle the Ooma wherever I happen to be at the time.

As I type this, I guess it makes sense to rule the alarm out definitively, even if that means reverting to b) or c) for problem detection. I'll disable line monitoring as you suggested and entirely remove the alarm from the line. Since the problem is happening roughly weekly, it should happen again soon enough, and then I can put the alarm system back on the line. In the meantime I'm finishing up the jack to let me easily get a voltage and current reading on the line. I'm guessing it will be a voltage problem as I found one reference indicating that's what the alarm panel is actually monitoring.

It caught me a bit by surprise that ADT called my home for the telco fault (makes no sense as that's the line that supposedly has failed). They do call my cell for any actual alarms. Fortunately the Ooma behavior for a failed house line is to dump to Ooma voicemail.

murphy
Posts:7554
Joined:Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:49 pm
Location:Pennsylvania

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by murphy » Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:46 am

I have never heard that tone sequence before.

I found that the default setup was way too annoying. One day I got a call asking if I was alright. That confused me because the alarm hadn't gone off and wasn't enabled. It turned out that a door sensor had started reporting that the battery was low. At that point it was still 28 days before absolute failure of the sensor.

I reprogrammed the alarm to not report any battery problems. They show up on the keypad screen and I can take care of them long before 28 days have gone by.
Customer since January 2009
Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety Phone
Telo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:27 pm

Thanks for listening.

Got them same audio sequence out of two different handsets that I tried. One is an early 1990s Panasonic answering machine/cordless base station, and the other is a 1970s rotary phone with a dialgizmo on it. There was dialtone on both until I tried dialing, after dialing the first digit the dialtone went away and those tones showed up. Very odd.

I'll take the alarm off the line. Reviewing the alarm reporting over the last 90 days, the only thing I see it phoning in are the line failures and the monthly ping. I'll have to test to make sure that with telco fault detection disabled, it still fails over to the cell reporting.

Getting ahead of the testing, I've been looking at some products from Viking, notably the TBB-1B. It talks about some alarm panels sensing low on-hook voltage and others sensing low off-hook current as a fault condition:

"A. Low Loop Current
Low loop current from a VoIP ATA, cable company, or telco provided phone lines can cause some alarm panels to go into an alarm state due to very low levels at the phone when in-use. Solve this problem by wiring a TBB-1B as shown below. The TBB-1B increases the in-use voltage."

"B. Low Idle Voltage
Low idle voltage from a VoIP ATA, cable company or telco provided phone lines can cause some alarm panels to go into an alarm state. Solve this problem by wiring a TBB-1B as shown below. A TBB-1B increases the idle voltage, converting 24 volt lines to 48 volt lines."

Since the problem seems to happen after an incoming call, that would lead me to think "A" would be more likely than "B", but neither would explain why the Telo stays in the fault condition after the call completes.

murphy
Posts:7554
Joined:Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:49 pm
Location:Pennsylvania

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by murphy » Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:56 pm

I have a problem that has existed since day 1 in 2009. If I am on a call and the other party hangs up I get a dial tone on my ancient 4 line Panasonic cordless phones. Even though the other party has disconnected I have to physically hang up the phone. This may be a Panasonic problem because if its answering machine answers a call on a Verizon landline and the calling party hangs up it stays on the line until a Verizon error message reports that the call can't be completed as dialed.
Customer since January 2009
Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety Phone
Telo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

oomamb
Posts:49
Joined:Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:08 pm

Re: Telo status online but house phones aren't.

Post by oomamb » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:21 am

I checked the version of my Telo this morning. It has changed. It's now at 414894. I'm guessing the last failure with different behavior (red flower) was the upgrade taking the Ooma off line for a few minutes and my unplugging / replugging the phone jack about 30 seconds before the flower went blue again could just have been a coincidence. Since they've changed that, I'll leave everything as is and see what happens next.

I've noticed a similar thing on my Panasonic since switching to Ooma. It's a KX-TG5771. If I pick up, when the caller hangs up, dialtone appears - for at least 20 sec, haven't listened longer - until I hang up. When people leave messages there's now about a second or two of dialtone on the end of the VM, but the answering machine eventually recognizes it and does hang up. That didn't happen back when I was on POTS, or more recently, Verizon FIOS phone service. Out of curiosity, I called myself from my cell, answered on the home phone, hung up the cell, and then, after dialtone appeared on the home phone, called my cell back without hanging up. It rang through. It would seem Ooma just goes back to phone-off-hook-send-dialtone mode as it would before you make a call when the former call disconnects.

Got me wondering how phones know when to hang up. Found this: http://www.sandman.com/cpcbull.html and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervisi ... ty_control. Don't know how Ooma implements this. This quote from the former seems to be consistent with the problem you described, but would be surprising if that's what the problem is: "Some VoIP and foreign telephone equipment used in the US (but not made for the US market) that provides dial tone and talk battery (FXS) only puts out a Reversal, not an open loop. If calls from that stuff end up in an automated device that only responds to US style CPC (0 volt) signals, the ports will never hang-up - and they'll be locked up until manually reset if the automated device doesn't have a time-out for maximum call length."

I've got an old USB recording oscilloscope down in the basement somewhere. I'll try and dig it up over the next few weeks because now I'm just curious...... it will give my wife a chance to roll her eyes at another 'project'. ;-)

Edit: if lack of CPC from the Telo is a problem for equipment on the line (don't know that it is), there seems to be at least one solution for it: https://www.vikingelectronics.com/products/cpc-1/. From the description, it will detect the dialtone and send a one second 0 loop voltage ("open loop") CPC to the analog equipment.

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