Fax using HP 8500 all in one printer using an OBI device

[redcatman]

I want to drop my land line and install an OBI device.  However, in addition to making and receiving phone calls, I need to be able to receive and send Faxes with my HP 8500 printer.  Is it possible to set up one of the OBI devices to do that?  The HP printer has a land line connection and needs to get a dial tone to send a fax, as well as sense an incoming call to receive the fax.

 

[Rick]

Discussed many times on the forums.  You may have to slow the speed of your fax machine and turn off error correction, but I use mine all the time.

[Rick]

Assuming you mean having the fax utilize Google Voice instead of a landline.  Discussed many times on the forums.  You may have to slow the speed of your fax machine and turn off error correction, but I use mine all the time.  I do it with an OBi110 but have no landline.

[redcatman]

Thanks for the reply. 

I believe I know the answer but I need one more clarification before I buy the OBI 110 and discontinue my land line - In addition to sending a fax, will the Fax printer recognize and pick up an "inbound" fax as it does now on the land line?

[Rick]

Yes, but ONLY if you set the machine to answer before Google Voice does at 25 seconds.

If you're home, you can hit the Enter button during the ringing to force the answer.

[dircom]

If you want to end your land land
Then you might consider an Obi 202
that way you can leave the fax connected all the time, while still being able to call in or out on a voice call
(assuming you have set up at least two providers)

[Lavarock7]

I use a 202 with Line1 being a phone and line2 being an HP fax machine. I have line 2 set up for GoogleVoice, set the speed to low (like 9600 baud) and turned error correction off. It seems to work fine. I set my Fax Header to be a different inbound fax number because that GV number I use for outbound and not inbound fax.

Inbound fax is a free New York City numner I got through Callcentric. I told them the number is being used from outside the U.S. since I won't be calling 911 outbound on it. The number is answered by callCentric, a fax is received, converted to PDF and emailed to me. This saves paper and if I started getting fax junk mail, CallCentric would allow me to reject those calls.

CallCentric does have a neat option. It appears that you can take your inbound number (whether a free New York number or one you pay for) and use it for both fax AND voice. If the call is fax, it can be configured to go to their fax service, but if it is not a fax call, the call get routed to whatever device or extension you want. I have not tested this, but it looks like it works.

[dircom]

I tested my free NYC CallCentric DID, and when it is not configured to receive a fax, it did not receive the fax.
When I turned faxing on, the fax was received.
The free # does not seem to be able to differentiate between voice and fax.  It seems you have to turn fax on in preferences to receive a fax

[Lavarock7]

dircom, you are correct. I just looked and it appears that for my testing, I had a call treatment that said if the caller ID was xxx-xxx-xxxx send to an extension.

The default for the inbound was fax.

So the system looked at caller ID when the call came in and then based upon that, sent to fax or not. that makes sense because CC could not determine if the call was fax or not until it answered the call (which it doesn't)

So if someone had another number forwarded into the free CC number, that could be used to trigger fax or not.

[dircom]

So for instance, if you had a free IPKALL #, and sent your faxes to that, then you could create a treatment for that # and it would go to fax?

[Lavarock7]

If you have a number specifically for fax, call it 111-111-1111, you could forward that number to the free CallCentric number. Let's say that CallCentric number is 999-999-9999.

You would then set up a call treatment to say:

If the calling number is 111-111-1111 then it's a fax.
Otherwise the call is coming from a person and send the call to an extension, etc.

In this case, you would lose the caller id of the person who dialed 111-111-1111 and just see 111-111-1111 as the caller ID.

I am doing something similar as this. I have an 808 area code number call it 808-555-1212 with Voip.Ms that I want to use for Fax, but Voip.Ms does not handle fax. Rather than forward the call to CC and pay a couple pennies for a transferred call, I send the call via a URI directly to my CC number. A URI is similar to a URL but in the format 17771234567@in.callcentric.com (this example uses the CC account number). Then at CC I just say if the call came in from the 808-555-1212 number, it's a fax. If someone calls the CC number directly, it is a voice call (which may or may not also get some kind of call ID treatment).