Old Telo Unit Seems to be Failing

[rschmidt46]

I was on the phone with tech support for nearly an hour today and did not get a call back after the unit was reset remotely. I' did the reset again myself, following instructions from the Ooma website. I believe my unit is failing. The speaker does not work. During the reset, I was supposed to hear a couple of beeps and they never happened. Admittedly I have a very old phone set but it does not appear to be malfunctioning.

Here's the problem I am experiencing: The phone stopped ringing approximately a week ago. It is only used for incoming "home phone" calls. I virtually never use it to call out, as I rely almost entirely on my cellphone. Today, I traced all the cords to make sure I didn't have a bad one. The Telo is connected to the router (which is working properly). The phone is connected to the Telo phone jack. When I disconnect the phone and plug it back in, I get the standard dial tone. But after a short time, the tone changes to busy and later to "off hook". I am not discovering this by keeping the phone off its cradle. I am picking up the receiver at intervals and hearing the different tones that way.

It really seems like the unit is dying. Right now, after being rebooted and reset, it has NO LIGHT on at all. Earlier it went through all the light changes and ended up solid red, even though it showed as online on MyOoma dashboard.

Can I get an Ooma Telo tested and, if faulty, replaced at Best Buy? They apparently sell them. If so, will everything work as before (same phone number, router and phone connection, etc.?

[Robek]

The Telo has custom hardware, firmware, and depends on the back-end Ooma servers, so Best Buy probably couldn't do much testing beyond what users could do for themselves. If there's no existing protection plan or extended warranty in place, then how much extra would they charge just to look at it?

If they end up deciding to replace the old Telo with a new one instead, then Ooma still needs to activate the new device, and transfer the existing account and phone numbers to it, in order for everything to work the same as before.

[Minok]

Just as an FYI, as my Telo was also failing/failed. I noticed my home phone wasn't getting a dial tone (because the usual weekly spam voicemails seemed to no longer be coming in)... checking the Tele device in the closet I see that only the 1 and 2 are light up, the rest is dark and unresponsive. After pulling the power cable and plugging it back in I then got nothing - totally dark.

Being electronically minded, I pulled the unit and power supply out of the closet, and to the workbench. With a multimeter I tested the power supply output, it read 5.1v at the jack so I thought it was good. OK, get the spudger after finding how to open up the Telo box, got the lid off, and the main board out - plugged the power supply in and took a reading at the input jack - that is, with most of the unit connected to the power supply, and it read only 4.6v. Uh, ok.

Got the bench power supply out, set it to 5v, 2a, and used it to power the Telo, and it booted right up.

So the TL;DR is The 5v/2a power supply failed and couldn't maintain a solid 5v at the 500ma draw the Telo needs.
Ordered a new 5v/2a power supply from amazon for $13 (the one with the variety of tips because you need just the right sized tip), and the Telo is back in service.

So if your Telo is seemingly dead/unresponsive, try a known good 5v/2a dc power supply to see if that fixes it.

[redchev1]

Good information, Minok. Thanks for posting. Did you happen to measure actual current draw of the Telo. Label on my Telo says 5 volts at 3 amps and the AC adapter that came with it is rated at 5 volts 3 amps. I have an issue that I posted about where the battery backup sold by Ooma can't handle my Telo with the 4G adapter attached. The battery has a USB output connector rated at 2 amps. Works OK with the Telo alone.