Sucess! How to set up Obi with a rotary phone that doesn't dial star (*)

[crmallon]

I wanted so badly to set up my vintage rotary phone (a Western Electric/Bell), but there were two major problems. I couldn't find any well-explained solutions anywhere online, so I'm posting this here for posterity.

1. Rotary phone use pulses instead of tones and most modern phone lines and VOIP do not recognize the pulses.

The solution was to obtain a pulse-to-tone converter to create the DTMF tones required for the phone to dial out. I bought one from oldphoneworks.com because it was inexpensive and did not require any installation or pulling my phone apart. It is a small box (near the size of the Obi200) that is plugged in between the phone and the Obi. It operates on power from the Obi and does not require any other power.

2. Once that was set up, the next obstacle was that my phone did not allow me to dial star (*), which is required to "Add Device" when configuring the Obi. Apparently, the Dialgizmo pulse-to-tone converter has a way to let you dial *, which is that you dial 2 and wait 2 seconds and dial 2 again and wait 2 seconds; this creates a */star tone. But my device doesn't have that feature.

The solution: After hours online, trying every solution I could think of, I emailed Obitalk.

I created a support ticket and explained: "I need to configure my new Obi but my rotary phone doesn't dial *. I have a pulse to tone converter, but it won't work with *. Do you have another way for me to configure my phone?" 

Within hours, I received a response: "We have done ADD DEVICE to your obitalk.com account, so you don't need to dial * key anymore. Please login back to obitalk.com and click on SP1 and select Google Voice and follow all the guided steps to associate your Google Voice account to the OBi. Once SP1 status becomes "Connected", you can make/receive calls on the OBi."

I logged in and they had, indeed, added the device for me. I followed the instructions to select Google Voice for SP1, and after a few minutes, the device was configured!

I just placed a call and it works great!!

[LTN1]

Lots of businesses today, especially after hours (Banks, government agencies, cell phone voicemail, etc.) require the use of the * and # to navigate through their menus. It's one thing to like the nostalgic look for a rotary style phone but it seems like a pain in the @$$ to try live that way today--always having to wait for a live person to assist or making sure that one calls only during business hours where there are live assistance.

Maybe the next in thing would be to get a rotary device for one's cell phone:

[Lavarock7]

You can always play a recorded tone into the mouthpiece:

http://jetcityorange.com/dtmf/

[restamp]

You can always play a recorded tone into the mouthpiece:

This is easier said than done.  I find most phones today do not pass tones from their microphone well enough for them to be reliably decoded.

[Lavarock7]

Of course, with me I would use an old touchtone pad, a small voltage source, a dropping resistor, test clips and a couple of .1 mf capacitors to isolate the pad from the dial phone, OR couple the sound output from the PC to bridge the phone line, but I digress.

If the mouthpiece way works, this website would allow someone to dial the complete code:

https://aggemam.dk/code/dtmf

[LTN1]

Assuming a person had an extra touch tone handset with speaker phone capabilities (not just a cell phone handset), the easiest way to replicate those tones is to put the touch tone handset on speaker and press those tones right next to the rotary phone mic. I've tested it a number of times with banks, my voicemail and even governmental agencies like the IRS and it always works.

If a person has an android based smartphone (I'm sure comparable iPhone apps are available), try a DTMF tone generator with the smartphone speaker against the mouthpiece of the rotary phone:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.simplyadvanced.simplytonegenerator&hl=en

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amknott.ToneGen&hl=en

[SteveInWA]

I wanted so badly to set up my vintage rotary phone (a Western Electric/Bell), but there were two major problems. I couldn't find any well-explained solutions anywhere online, so I'm posting this here for posterity.

1. Rotary phone use pulses instead of tones and most modern phone lines and VOIP do not recognize the pulses.

The solution was to obtain a pulse-to-tone converter to create the DTMF tones required for the phone to dial out. I bought one from oldphoneworks.com because it was inexpensive and did not require any installation or pulling my phone apart. It is a small box (near the size of the Obi200) that is plugged in between the phone and the Obi. It operates on power from the Obi and does not require any other power.

2. Once that was set up, the next obstacle was that my phone did not allow me to dial star (*), which is required to "Add Device" when configuring the Obi. Apparently, the Dialgizmo pulse-to-tone converter has a way to let you dial *, which is that you dial 2 and wait 2 seconds and dial 2 again and wait 2 seconds; this creates a */star tone. But my device doesn't have that feature.

The solution: After hours online, trying every solution I could think of, I emailed Obitalk.

I created a support ticket and explained: "I need to configure my new Obi but my rotary phone doesn't dial *. I have a pulse to tone converter, but it won't work with *. Do you have another way for me to configure my phone?"  

Within hours, I received a response: "We have done ADD DEVICE to your obitalk.com account, so you don't need to dial * key anymore. Please login back to obitalk.com and click on SP1 and select Google Voice and follow all the guided steps to associate your Google Voice account to the OBi. Once SP1 status becomes "Connected", you can make/receive calls on the OBi."

I logged in and they had, indeed, added the device for me. I followed the instructions to select Google Voice for SP1, and after a few minutes, the device was configured!

I just placed a call and it works great!!

You could have simply plugged in any ordinary touch-tone telephone into the OBi for setup purposes, and then replaced it with your old phone afterwards.  How hard could that have been?

With regard to the device you purchased from oldphoneworks, I read their description of that product, and it specifically states that it doesn't send * or #.  Send it back, and instead, buy their Rotatone product.  I installed a Rotatone inside my 1947-vintage WE 302 phone, and it works fine.

http://www.oldphoneworks.com/rotatone-pulse-to-tone-converter.html