home telephoney wiring anyone?

[danyal711]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew if you can ring the rest of your house phones from any jack in the house. I know the signal needed is 90Volts at 60Hz on the middle pair (I think) but if you ran that into a random jack, would all the other phones ring or would the signal get smothered by the telephone box or destroy the telephone box? Any help/tutorials would be appreciated.

 

[Bullitt]

IIRC thats quite possible, but its a pain in the friggin arse if one of the jacks goes bad. Look into a "Home Run" setup. Its much more stable, or a "Star" setup because its easier to troubleshoot. Basically, you're describing the "Daisy Chain" where one feeds off the next, the third feeds from the 2nd, etc etc, so if jack #1 goes bad, all phones go away. This is how the jerkholes in my house did it and I spent too much time and money re-wiring everything to get it working reliably.

 

[jpmkm]

IIRC, the standard frequency is 20Hz, but electronic ringers are probably a lot more forgiving with regards to frequency so it might not make much of a difference.

 

[agent420]

The telco isn't going to like you inserting 90vac into their lines. Could cause damage that will get your service disconnected. If you want to risk your own stuff, make sure you pull the service from the drop point outside your house.

I also think there is a dtmf code / number that you could dial that would ring back your line, but I forget it now. I'm sure if it's still used Google will have it.

 

[Mohonri]

If you're trying to hook up VoIP to the telephone wiring in your house, I would very highly recommend this guide. It's very detailed and thorough. Even if you're not doing the voip thing, it'll definitely give you some good information.

 

[danyal711]

Sorry, 20Hz is right, thats what I meant . Regardless, the thing is, I am asking more in general not just for my specific setup. So I mainly want to know if I could ring all the phones in a house no matter how it is wired. Also, I figure that they wouldnt want me putting 90VAC into their lines but thats exactly what I want to fine out.

Basically what I want to do is keep my house phones working as they are (with just standard phone service) but also be able to input my own signal (without messing with the box) from any jack in order to for example use all the phones as an intercom. This is actually the perfect example. So if one person lets say picks up a given phone they could for example ring the other phones by dialing #7 for example, and then someone else could pick up the other phones and have a convo with them. Is this at all possible without doing things at the phone box level?

 

[Mohonri]

You would have to put in your own switchboard/exchange if you want to turn your phones into an intercom system. eBay has a bunch. This one looks cheap and decent. But I'm no expert on PBXs.

You also might look into the multi-handset phone systems that are out there--they may offer the kind of features you're looking for. They wouldn't work with any random phone in the house, but might meet your needs between the handsets of that system.

 

[Whatsisname]

You'd be best off purchasing a bunch of business class telephones. There are many models that can work together with intercom functions and stuff without screwing around with the actual phone service. The next step above that is a hybrid voice system, but those are very expensive.

 

[chopsuwe]

Here in NZ you pick up one phone, dial 137 and hang up. All the phones ring and you wait till someone picks up their end, pick up yours agaiin and talk. No Mods necessary. It's used by Telecom as a test feature but they don't mind you using it.

Also 136 is a little different. Same process, just wait 10seconds after dialing before hanging up. It calls back but instead of the normal ring, ring...pause..ring ring...pause it misses out the pauses and sounds like there is something wrong with the phone.

Connecting anything else to a phone line is illegal unless it has been approved by your telecom company.