Obi200 whole house phone off hook

[nightshark]

I am trying to get all of my phone jacks a dial tone with the obi200. I've read around everywhere and can't figure this issue out. The phone company line has been disconnected from the house and we have the modern wiring with cat 5. The jacks are wired to blue and blue/white. When I plug the obi in it says off hook and the phone light flashes. If I just plug a phone in to it everything works.

Any ideas?

[SteveInWA]

Hi:

Plug the phone directly into the OBi for testing purposes.  Does it work properly?  If so, then you definitely have a wiring fault.  Some examples:  somebody drove a cable staple through the jacket and shorted two wires, a rodent chewed on it, or one of the Cat 5 modular blocks is incorrectly wired, or there is some other device connected to the phone wiring that is causing the problem.

If you have a multimeter and a spare phone cord, then cut one end off of the phone cord, strip the wires, and plug the other end into one of the wall jacks.  There should be infinite resistance between all of the wires.

[A_Friend]

Do all the jacks go back to a common patch panel or punch block, or are they daisy-chained one to another?  You mention Cat-5.  Are these 4-pair (8-conductor) RJ45 jacks, and if so, are some of them hooked up as ethernet drops?

[nightshark]

I guess daisy chained. There's one junction box in the attic where all of the blue wires are together and all the blue/white are together. None are hooked up as Ethernet. Using a phone works directly with obi.

[SteveInWA]

The way to diagnose this is to a) make sure nothing is plugged into any of the home's phone jacks, and then b) use a meter to check that there is no connection between the individual wires, per my original post.

Really, the easiest and most common way to use an OBiTALK device, is with a cordless phone system with multiple handsets.  You simply plug the base station directly into the OBi 200, then enjoy phone service wherever you are in the house, or even a half-block down the street.

[nightshark]

Thanks for the pointers. I remembered last night one of the jacks looked odd. The installer trapped the red wire under the green terminal on a jack. Fixed that and now it's working!

[SteveInWA]

Good work!