After several weeks of reading various forums and experimenting with my alarm system and home phone, I finally got my OBI 110 set up with everything working. This post will hopefully save someone else a lot of time/effort. Thanks to all those who posted the solutions below (i.e. did the real work).
1. Porting existing landline to Google Voice (GV). Lots of options and info out there, but I ported my landline to a Verizon prepaid phone, and then ported that number to GV. Cost was $19.95 for a new phone and INCLUDED minutes plus another $20 to port that number to GV. I just missed getting a Verizon refurb phone with minutes for only $14.95. After reading all the options (AT&T prepaid, T-mobile sim card, etc), I went with Verizon because I was able to purchase phone with minutes and port my number ALL online in one easy order--no calls to the service dept or separate porting request. I did contact Verizon prepaid technical support during the port process, and they were VERY helpful and provided my account number with no quibbling. Everything went very well, but it took ~ 1 week to get the phone and all of the porting process to complete. Lived with a cell phone as our home phone for ~48 hours while the Verizon and GV port completed. Everything followed closely to these posts and I did not have any problems (except being patient).
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/google-voice-a-step-by-step-primer-on-ditching-your-land-line-while-keeping-your-number/10455http://lifehacker.com/5794553/how-to-port-your-number-to-google-voice-without-paying-an-arm-and-a-leg2. Setting up OBI110 with GV account as SP1. This was relatively straightforward and no issues encountered.
3. Setting up E911 service. This was simple following the directions in various posts. I went with Anveo for $0.80/month and set that up on SP2. I DID call my local police dispatch center and told them I wanted to test my service. Called 911 five minutes later, got the exact same operator, and she confirmed my address and that 911 was working correctly.
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2076.04. Getting Next Alarm to work with OBI110/GV. This was a bit more difficult and after lots of experimentation I discovered the only thing required was to set DTMF to 'In line' for SP1.
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2376.0 Any/all other combinations of settings did not let alarm dial out and/or caused alarm to crash or not release phone line. I chased several 'red herrings' here with 'DTMF fixed duration', signal strength, noise, etc. After many iterations, it all came down to 1 setting that made the alarm work or not work: 'in line' for DTMF.
5. Getting Google Voice Mail (GVM) to work. Unfortunately, setting SP1 DTMF to 'in line' to enable Next Alarm to work, made GVM unusable because GVM will not recognize touch tones using 'In line' DTMF. Solution was found here:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2376.0I followed the directions exactly as described by "Ron R" (thanks Ron!) and cut and pasted 'digitmap' into OBI 110 control panel for SP2. I then changed SP2 DTMF to 'in line' and changed SP1 DTMF back to 'Automatic'. Now my alarm calls went through SP2 (which worked just fine) and GVM and all outgoing calls worked on SP1, including all DTMF tones. It was kind of cool to look in the OBI call log and see that the calls had been routed correctly. The last issue I had was with Next Alarm. When routing all 800 numbers through IdeaSIP, Next Alarm sent me notices that they did not recognize my 'new' home phone number (which was the IdeaSIP server number). That was easily solved by going to my Next Alarm account page and adding the new '800 gateway' number into my Next Alarm account, which was found in the e-mail from Next Alarm. The Next Alarm page has an option to add a second number as a 'dedicated alarm line' while leaving your home phone number in as your primary voice line. This did the trick and the alarm was happy again.
6. Adding Caller ID. After step five I was pretty happy. I had everything set up and working, no nuisance warnings, and an $0.80/mo phone bill! However, after several spam calls and realization from my family members that names were no longer coming up for caller ID, I decided to follow the directions here:
http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/how-to-use-the-simon-telephonics-google-voice-gateway-with-an-obihai-device-to-provide-caller-id-name-on-incoming-google-voice-calls/to get caller ID back. Again, this process was straightforward and no issues occurred.
So, now I have an OBI110 set up with simon telephonics gateway to GV set up on SP1 (DTMF=auto) and Anveo set up on SP2. SP2 DTMF is set to 'in line', and includes a gateway server to ideaSIP to route all 800/877 numbers through, including my Next Alarm system. Next Alarm, Google Voice Mail, E911, and caller ID all work. I hope this helps someone else get set up faster and easier.
Tom W
