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Configuring OBi110 to act as a "ringdown" or hotline circuit for a door phone

Started by tmetro, July 26, 2011, 04:30:54 PM

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tmetro

I'm considering the idea of using OBi110 to act as a "ringdown" or hotline circuit for a door phone, such as one of these:

Viking Electronics E-20B Door Box
Bogen ADP-1 Door Phone

These door phones contain the same electronics as a regular analog speaker phone, have no dial-pad (or dialing circuitry), and a call button that takes the phone off hook for a fixed period of time (adjustable from 15 seconds to several minutes).

The way this normally works is that when the phone goes off hook, a ringdown device will automatically dial a designated number. Typically this is done with some specialized hardware made for use with door phones, or a specially programmed PBX port. The stand-alone analog hardware to do this runs $80 ~ $100.

Using an ATA for this purpose is potentially far more flexible, as you can route the calls from the door phone to either the onsite house phone or to a remote location, and you give the door phone a dedicated number, without the expense of a dedicated analog line, so you can call in to it from a remote location.

Some searching of the forums did turn up a reference to "hotline" and I found this brief mention in the Administration Guide. In the "Digit Map Rules and Elements" section, on page 118 and 119:


<:1234> – Matches an empty phone number and replaces with 1234. This is the syntax for a hotline to 1234
<S0:1234> – Equivalent to the last example
<:#> – Hotline to the number #
<S0:#> – Equivalent to the last example
<S4:1234> – Call 1234 if no digits entered for 4s. This is the syntax of a warm line.


Apparently <> designates a pattern substitution. The part before the : is the pattern, and an empty pattern matches anything. Looks like you can also use an S followed by a number of seconds, which causes that pattern to be applied after that number of seconds has passed. The portion after the : are the digits to replace the matched pattern.

I don't have an OBi110 yet to try this out myself, so I asked a friend to give it a spin. He configured his OBi110 to use Callcentric as the primary provider. Test dialed my Callcentric number successfully. Then he went into the OBi110 web UI and navigated to Management -> Physical Interfaces -> PHONE Port, then replaced the contents of DigitMap with <:1234> where 1234 was my Callcentric number as previously test dialed.

He rebooted the OBi110, took his phone off hook, got a dial tone briefly, then an error tone (fast busy). My line didn't ring.

Anyone know what was wrong with our setup?

-Tom

RonR

If <:1234> is a valid number (i.e. 18005551212) for the PrimaryLine, then it should immediately go out the PrimaryLine.  If not, you would also need a rule in the OutboundCallRoute that matches the 'dialed' number and routes it appropriately:

Physical Interfaces -> PHONE Port -> OutboundCallRoute : {1234:spx}

where spx is sp1 or sp2 (the Callcentric trunk)

The actual PHONE Port DigitMap should be : (<:1234>)

The enclosing parenthesis are required.

tmetro

Quote from: RonR on July 26, 2011, 04:57:35 PM
The actual PHONE Port DigitMap should be : (<:1234>)
The enclosing parenthesis are required.

Thank you, that did it. (That requirement wasn't clear from the documentation.)

-Tom