OBi200 RJ11 Port failure (corrected title)

[FreeServiceForLife]

I have owned 2 OBi200 that have experienced RJ11 Port failure.  Since this seems to be an alarming failure rate, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this?  I had both devices plugged into surge suppression at the power and RJ11 ports when they failed.  The first was covered under warranty, but second was not.  So I'm trying to find out if this is a manufacturing issue before I order a new one.

OBiHAI does not do repairs of the devices.  Does anyone know of a homebrew repair for these devices?

Thanks

[drgeoff]

There is very little to fail in a RJ11 jack and most are subjected to only a handful of insertions during their lifetime. What have you been doing to kill two?

Given the cost of labour and overheads, by the time you have done the paperwork of booking a device into a repair queue there's barely enough money left from the cost of a new device to pay for a technician to take the screws out of the case of a faulty one.

Anyone competent at electronic repairs should be able to replace that socket.

[FreeServiceForLife]

There is very little to fail in a RJ11 jack and most are subjected to only a handful of insertions during their lifetime. What have you been doing to kill two?

I did absolutely nothing to them.. they commited suicide on their own!  

These were 2 separate devices in 2 separate locations.  The OBi200 was working fine (lights all on and showed active in portal), the problem the RJ11 jack had no power, so no phone to call out or get calls in.  It appears like a failure on the motherboard.  I don't have a schematic to look at so no idea what actually failed.

Any help or guidance from any electronic folks in here would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Agent88]

What makes you think you have a RJ11 Jack failure?  Are you sure you are not confusing power from the wall wart?  I have scads of RJ11 jacks I have installed in various equipment, wall outlets, etc.  and have yet to ever had one fail.  If the equipment connected through the jack fails, then it isn't the fault of the jack, it is something else.

BTW:  do you know the difference between an RJ11 and a RJ45?

[FreeServiceForLife]

What makes you think you have a RJ11 Jack failure?  Are you sure you are not confusing power from the wall wart?  I have scads of RJ11 jacks I have installed in various equipment, wall outlets, etc.  and have yet to ever had one fail.  If the equipment connected through the jack fails, then it isn't the fault of the jack, it is something else.

BTW:  do you know the difference between an RJ11 and a RJ45?

Why do I think that?  Because that is why OBi replaced the first one under warranty.  Yes I know the difference between RJ11 and RJ45.  When I place a phone tester in the RJ11 port on the OBi200, none of the lights come on indicating no power on the RJ11 port.  Yes the tester is good because when I use it on the working OBi200, the light come on (Green ok light).

So somehow on the logicboard of the OBi200, something is failing.. not from surge, but from something else.  The rest of the OBi200 appears to be working.  LAN light, Internet connectivity, etc...

Again if anyone has any ideas now that I have established that it is the RJ11 port that has failed, I would appreciate any feedback.

[SteveInWA]

RJ-11 jacks don't fail.  It is much more likely that there is either a configuration error, or less likely, the circuitry that operates that jack failed.  The jack is simply two gold-plated pins.  There's nothing to go wrong with the jack.

Inside the OBi, there are no-user-replaceable parts that you could repair.  There is a highly-integrated module, known as a Subscriber Line Interface Circuit, or SLIC, that performs all the telephone line functions, including generating the on-hook, off-hook and ringing voltages.  It's protected by fused links and other protection circuitry.  If you damage the OBi via ESD (electrostatic discharge) or a lightening strike or by connecting the OBi's phone jack to some other telephone service, it's possible to fry that circuit.  There is no manufacturing quality issue here.

[drgeoff]

So the opening post was totally misleading.

+1 to what SteveInWA has posted.

[FreeServiceForLife]

So the opening post was totally misleading.

Why is it misleading?!!  The symptom is multiple OBi200 devices failed at the RJ11 jack.  How else could a person better describe it?  I have no idea about the inner workings of the device that Steve has kindly mentioned (1st valid response).  Since the device was plugged into a surge protector at the power and phone line and that surge protector did not trip or clamp down, it is highly unlikely that it was ESD.

Thanks for your response Steve.

EDIT:  Appears it may be something to defects on the motherboard  http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=11570.0

[SteveInWA]

Let's write off your original description as a "RJ11 Jack failure" as an inaccurate name for the actual problem and move on.  It's like saying that the power plug on your vacuum cleaner must be bad because the brush roll won't turn, when the real cause is a broken belt.

Plugging the OBi into a surge protector only protects its AC power adapter from catastrophic power surges (and, if it's a better-quality protector, from some AC line noise).  It doesn't do anything beyond that.  Many surge protectors are junk, and the MOVs that they use to clamp dangerous power surges can eventually fail over time.  If the surge protector is more than 5 years old, and/or is from a hardware/big-box store, it's not going to be as effective as a higher-quality product from APC, Tripplite, or Panamax.  Telephone line protection included in surge protectors is very crude, and only blocks major events, not ESD.

Destructive events can happen via the telephone wiring attached to the OBi, or even you touching it and getting zapped.

There are no inherent manufacturing issues with the motherboard.

Here are a list of possible causes of failure, sorted in order from most likely to least likely:

• Something plugged into the RJ-11 phone jack conducted a harmful level of power into the SLIC.  This includes your attached telephone, any house wiring into which the device is plugged, any physical damage to that wiring, such as a staple or nail in the wall that punctures the wiring, inductive surge passed to the house wiring via parallel wires, ESD striking any of the wiring or any of the devices plugged into the OBi, and, especially, any telephone company or cable company telephone line connection still connected to that house wiring.
• ESD from you, or somebody else, or even a pet, contacting the OBi or its attached telephone(s)
• Substantial "brown-out" or sag in the line voltage to the OBi's AC adapter, which surge protectors do not deal with.
• Internal component failure; highly unlikely to be the cause, given that you have had two incidents of this.
• Sinister black-helicopter government agency dropping an EMP weapon on your house.

The OBi 200 and 202 will be on sale at Amazon soon.  Just buy another one, but before you do, consider that something at your premises caused this failure, not Obihai nor its products.

Again, there are no user-serviceable parts inside OBi devices.

[SteveInWA]

Announced by Obihai yesterday:   

Save on the OBi202 (Sep 20) and the OBi200 (Sep 27) on Amazon
We will be having a sale on the OBi202 on Sep 20 and the OBi200 on Sep 27. If you have been thinking about getting a new OBi200 or OBi202 device, remember to mark this on your calendar.

[FreeServiceForLife]

Let's write off your original description as a "RJ11 Jack failure" as an inaccurate name for the actual problem and move on.  It's like saying that the power plug on your vacuum cleaner must be bad because the brush roll won't turn, when the real cause is a broken belt.

I have changed the title to reflect I was not referring to the physical jack but to the failure of the normal operation of the jack.

Plugging the OBi into a surge protector only protects its AC power adapter from catastrophic power surges (and, if it's a better-quality protector, from some AC line noise).  It doesn't do anything beyond that.  Many surge protectors are junk, and the MOVs that they use to clamp dangerous power surges can eventually fail over time.  If the surge protector is more than 5 years old, and/or is from a hardware/big-box store, it's not going to be as effective as a higher-quality product from APC, Tripplite, or Panamax.  Telephone line protection included in surge protectors is very crude, and only blocks major events, not ESD.

My 2nd OBi200 that failed was plugged into a Panamax M4LT-EX which was less that 2 months old.  As you stated this is a quality product.

Destructive events can happen via the telephone wiring attached to the OBi, or even you touching it and getting zapped.

I agree with this assessment.  If an electronic product is going to fail, it will usually fail in the first year.  But when a second identical device fails in a different location in the same manner, it makes you ask some questions which has brought me to the forum.  There have also been reports of this on Amazon reviews.  Interestingly my OBi100 is still ticking without issue while I have 2 failed OBi200s.

There are no inherent manufacturing issues with the motherboard.

What about at the component level?  Perhaps a bad lot?  I'm not the only one reporting this type of failure

Here are a list of possible causes of failure, sorted in order from most likely to least likely:

• Something plugged into the RJ-11 phone jack conducted a harmful level of power into the SLIC.  This includes your attached telephone, any house wiring into which the device is plugged, any physical damage to that wiring, such as a staple or nail in the wall that punctures the wiring, inductive surge passed to the house wiring via parallel wires, ESD striking any of the wiring or any of the devices plugged into the OBi, and, especially, any telephone company or cable company telephone line connection still connected to that house wiring.

ruling this out as the failure happened in 2 separate locations and 2 different infrastructures.

• Internal component failure; highly unlikely to be the cause, given that you have had two incidents of this.

This is at the top of my list.  why you ask?  Because that is exactly what happened (OBiHAI even confimed this on the first failure under warranty and replace my OBi200).  The SLIC failed because of an "event".  The fact that it happened multiple times tells me that there is a higher chance of failure in an OBi200 than in the previous generation.  I don't believe in coincidences and I'm very careful with equipment, so I have to believe there is something more to these failures.

Steve thank you very much for your time and constructive feedback.  I hope by creating this thread, I can draw some attention to the problem and if anyone at OBiHAI is reading may look into the problem and see if there is anything they can beef up on future versions or see if a bad lot of devices went out (my 2 OBi200s that failed were purchased 2 months apart and potentially in same manufacturing run).

I have enjoyed the OBi products and will continue to use them.  Just a little frustrated with this type of component failure when I took precautions to prevent such an event from happening.

Thanks again

Note: After opening up the defective OBi200 case, the PCB indicates 'OBI200 v1.2 2013-01-26' '24623A 29 14'.  Again both of the OBI200s I purchased were in the Fall of 2014 so they may be from the same run.

[Lavarock7]

RJ-11 jacks don't fail.  It is much more likely that there is either a configuration error, or less likely, the circuitry that operates that jack failed.  The jack is simply two gold-plated pins.  There's nothing to go wrong with the jack.

I take a slight issue with this. I have seen RJ11 and RJ45 female connectors fail, although not often. The pins have gotten stuck between the plastic channels and have not fallen down to touch the male metal parts. A dental tool fixed the problem.