Having trouble connecting scout upstairs

[dlherrin]

I have had my ooma system for about one week and am having some trouble getting an ooma scout placed in the upstairs of my house. I have diagrammed the situation as I understand it in the attached PNG. At the Network Interface Device outside the house, there are two lines going into the house: one going upstairs and the other downstairs.

The downstairs line is where I have the ooma hub set up and it works great. From there the line goes upstairs to my kitchen, and if I take the phone off the wall and jury-rig up the scout it works well. This is, however, not an ideal location for the scout as there is not a lot of counter space and putting it there will put it in harms way by our food preparation.

The other line from the NID goes directly to the bedroom. When I plug the scout in here, I get the 4 solid red lines indicating the scout cannot find the base unit.

I am currently using a wireless phone to get long distance service upstairs, and have my ooma voice mail forwarded to my email, but would vastly prefer to have the scout working somewhere upstairs as going downstairs to check for messages is inconvenient.

Any ideas?

Thanks in Advance,
Dave

[dlherrin]

The silence is deafening....

Can nobody offer a suggestion on how I might mount an ooma scout on the wall in a kitchen? ooma? What is the plan for using your product in a kitchen? You must have a plan.

Thanks!
Dave

[jkennett]

I am having a similar issue. I have hub on 2nd floor. Scout on first. I have two lines coming in to the house. The hub is working fine. Scout cannot find hub. Kind of a waste if I can't cancel LAN line. I have an e-mail into support, will let you know what I find out.

[aviatorden]

I had the same problem. If you are using a land line, you have to go the the Ooma Lounge under preferences and register the scout (Assign a device) then assign another phone number to the scout. With in 5 minutes mine worked.

Dennis

[jkennett]

Hey Dennis:

Did your scout lights go from 4 red to blue? I have tried the assign an asset and then gave it a new phone number. But the lights are still red after 20 minutes. I will give it some more time but I am wondering if your lights changed. I am not getting the Ooma dial-tone on the 1st floor phone that is hooked up to the scout either.

[dlherrin]

I had the same problem. If you are using a land line, you have to go the the Ooma Lounge under preferences and register the scout (Assign a device) then assign another phone number to the scout. With in 5 minutes mine worked.

Dennis

So am I to understand that I need to use an ooma premier feature to get the scout to work as you have outlined above? I'm willing to try it, but was hoping to save money by not being an ooma premier subscriber.

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how this works. Even though the scout can't communicate with the hub, if I register it with its own phone number suddenly it works? Why?

Dave

[Bobby B]

Hi Dave,

You do NOT need ooma Premier to have the ooma Scout work. What Dennis mentions above is defining the Scout as a private device. If the Scout is not a private device, it automatically gets rolled into the Shared Device pool when it's connected.

Was the upstairs bedroom phone jack ever working before with a regular landline?

The Scout not working in some locations of the home is usually attributed to the phone wiring in your home. The Scout uses a technology called HPNA to communicate with the ooma Hub through your home phone wiring. HPNA usually can be affected if:
a. There is interference affecting your phone wiring (ex: insufficiently shielded electrical).
b. Your internal phone wiring is too long (which can occur if the phone cable has been wrapped or coiled many times over).

Thanks,
Bobby

So am I to understand that I need to use an ooma premier feature to get the scout to work as you have outlined above? I'm willing to try it, but was hoping to save money by not being an ooma premier subscriber.

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how this works. Even though the scout can't communicate with the hub, if I register it with its own phone number suddenly it works? Why?

Dave

[jkennett]

I have tried the assigning the scout a private number as well as rolling it into a shared asset with the hub. Neither have worked. The wiring in my house is very long, as I have two lines in for 1 number. One line comes from the basement, the other from the attic. The hub is on the second floor and works fine. Any other thoughts on how to get the scout working?

[dlherrin]

Hi Dave,

Was the upstairs bedroom phone jack ever working before with a regular landline?

The Scout not working in some locations of the home is usually attributed to the phone wiring in your home. The Scout uses a technology called HPNA to communicate with the ooma Hub through your home phone wiring. HPNA usually can be affected if:
a. There is interference affecting your phone wiring (ex: insufficiently shielded electrical).
b. Your internal phone wiring is too long (which can occur if the phone cable has been wrapped or coiled many times over).

Hi Bobby. Thanks for writing. The upstairs jack continues to work with my landline. (I have not discontinued it.) I have a good wired phone on it and I get a clear signal, so I don't think interference is the problem -- unless of course the phone signal from my landline is considered interference. The distance between the scout and the hub is somewhere between 50-60 feet by my mental reckoning.

Dave

[holger]

I have the same problem: My phone works upstairs, but not the Scout. My Scout works when plugged in closer to the hub. I've just gotten off the support line. This is what I learned:

* It is likely a wiring problem. The Scout is more sensitive to wiring as it uses HPNA (?) which needs a cleaner line.

* Support couldn't offer ways to resolve this problem, other then plugging the Scout into another jack and hope.

* I asked whether the new hardware that ooma announced would be less sensitive. Support didn't know, and said this hardware isn't expected before end of 2009.

Holger