While his POTS was still hooked up, my friend hooked the phone port of his obi100 into a dsl noise filter, and then plugged the filter into the wall jack. He said the obi started blinking orange for a little while like it was updating firmware. He thought that was strange, so he disconnected it from wall jack, and unplugged the obi's power. After reconnecting it directly to his phone and testing inbound and outbound calls, his obi still seems to be working. But is there any way to tell if it was damaged in any way? Could this have shortened the life of the device? Would the DSL filter have spared it from being damaged?
The setup instructions that come with the obi do not warn against doing this. This is a great product, but Obihai should really put a big warning on the first page of the installation guide, don't you think? It seems like something many people would easily try, not realizing the potential consequences...
The DSL filter does not block the 48 VDC from the phone line so it would not offer any protection. If the Obi is still working and operating the attached phone properly then he was lucky and got away with it. It probably will have no bearing on the life of the Obi.