Obi travel wishlist

[Zarf]

I travel a lot for extended periods and I picked up the 110 as a way of drawing US dialtone while overseas.  The unit is fantastic and is a permanent part of my travel kit.  That said I'd like to make a few "pie in the sky" suggestions for future revisions specifically related to travel.  I understand that these may be impractical or of limited value to the market you are addressing, but guess it couldn't hurt to ask 

1.  Implement an interface 'schedule' where you could inhibit the ATA from ringing the FXS.  For example it would be nice to program Obi not to ring the phone between 10pm and 7am.  I hate getting woken up by calls from back home starting with "Hi is it 3am or 3pm there?  I couldn't figure it out..."  If the call is unimportant they can leave voice mail, otherwise they can spend a few $ to make a LD call to the hotel if it's urgent.  It would be nice if the Obi power light would be perhaps a solid yellow when the inbounds are inhibited.  Of course outbound calls should still be able to be made anytime.

2.  I don't know if the circuitry requires 12V as provided by the wall transformer or if it's stepped-down to TTL levels with a DC-DC converter but in any case it would be sweet if Obi could run on 5VDC (like the Linksys SPA3102).  This way you could use your iPod/Kindle/cell phone USB charger to power the Obi or even a laptop USB port in a pinch.  One less wall wart to carry (or accidentally leave behind) is a very good thing.

3.  Minor firmware change -- add GMT + 09:30 for South Australia.  I noticed that you support GMT + 05:45 for our friends in Kathmandu (pop about 1.4 million). but think the 1.6M around Adelaide might supply more customer prospects for your products. 

Anyway hope we can get more ideas here from the Obi community specifically relating to taking it on the road and thanks for making such a superb product!

[OBi-Guru]

Can't help it but I have to reply this quickly      very nice compliment, thank you.

1. Unplug your phone cord from the OBi before you go to bed, and plug it back in the morning, trouble is - how to remember doing this routine?  how about use alarm clock .... 
2. Due to some silly requirement of 5 REN (to support the ringing of 5 old mechanical phones), we need to use 12V to generate those voltages.   The requirement is not so useful these days but some of our Service provider customers are still stuck to their check-lists.    Yes, wouldn't it be nice to plug it to your USB port to power this?
3. Still could not figure out why Kathmandu is on 45 mins past.  We could not possibly overlook Adelaide - beautiful city - will add it next time.

[DoNotDisturb]

DND = Do Not Disturb
*78 to enable, *79 to disable.

Google Voice also has a DND setting but not time interval based like you ask for.

[Zarf]

Thanks for the suggestions OBi-Guru & DoNotDisturb...

Understand about the ringer equivalence current problems, alas.

Am familiar with the *78/79 DND protocols, but unfortunately it's a very poor fix.  You have to have to remember to enable it when you go to bed (worst outcome, you get a call at 4am), but even more insidious is if you forget to disable it when you get up and miss calls for the rest of the day/week/month.

I was thinking of picking up a few units as gifts for ex-pats but wanted to minimize the annoyance factor.  My workaround is to also supply a dd-wrt or tomato flashed router where you can schedule access restrictions and block internet access to the Obi via MAC or IP at certain times.  It would be more elegant if it was in the Obi firmware since you can't make outbounds when the router cuts you off (plus not disconnecting any calls in progress).  I was very pleased that the Obi firmware doesn't go through its mousekateer roll-call if it has previously registered with a SIP provider (i.e., it doesn't reset and click the relay every few minutes like when you plug it in without good IP service.)  The downside is that I don't want to become my friends' network guru and get calls if they can't watch Hulu from Burkina Faso or wherever  

[MichiganTelephone]

2. Due to some silly requirement of 5 REN (to support the ringing of 5 old mechanical phones), we need to use 12V to generate those voltages.   The requirement is not so useful these days but some of our Service provider customers are still stuck to their check-lists.    Yes, wouldn't it be nice to plug it to your USB port to power this?

Actually not so silly — some of us still have a whole house full of extension phones (plus maybe one or more in a garage, barn or shed), and with those 5V units you have to use one of these devices to get all your phones to ring.  So the fact that the OBi's will deliver a solid 5 REN is an advantage (one I wish I'd known about when I was writing my reviews, because I'd definitely have mentioned it, but I've rectified that oversight now ).  Consider it a selling point, not a silly requirement, because some of your users really are still using wired phones (I won't say who, but I guarantee they are out there!).  

[Thunderbird1]

We could not possibly overlook Adelaide - beautiful city - will add it next time.

+1

3.  Minor firmware change -- add GMT + 09:30 for South Australia.

If I could add to Zarf's suggestion:-

Consider adding a generic GMT/UTC offset list between -12.00 and +12.00 in 1/2 hr increments and/or a 'user defined' field for entering a time offset?

As Zarf pointed out, Sth Aust/Northern Territory use UTC +9.30 / +10.30. Additionally, Lord Howe Island use UTC +10.30 for standard time and UTC +11.00 for daylight saving time - a 1/2 hr difference instead of the normal 1 hr difference. Norfolk Island use UTC +11.30 for standard time and don't observe daylight saving.

[pyyhkala]

I second the request to have a usb cable charging solution instead of only the wall adapter.  If there was a usb cable you could charge the unit, and also use it with a variety of external batteries.

My travel setup right now is:
*Verizon 4G LTE hot spot;
*NetGear WiFi>Ethernet adapter (allows OBi100 2connect to VZW hotspot)
*Belkin surge protecter with 2 usb ports & 3 outlets.  The VZW hotspot & Netgear device can connect to usb for power.
*Trimline phone.
*Grid-It Organizer.
*Bag to keep all gear.

So top wishes would be a charging/power usb cable for the OBi100 and also WiFi connectivity for a travel OBi.  Again, trying to minimize the number of cables and gadgets that must be brought, and which are also easy to lose and leave behind, I'm hoping the Grid-It organizer cuts down on lost parts and cables.

[Warren]

My wife and I have an OBi110 and an OBi202, and we have several different SIP accounts that we share. We both travel frequently and for extended periods, and it would be great to use the OBi110 for travel and just use the OPBi202 at home. It would be really nice to use different SIP accounts on different OBi devices depending on which one of us, or both, are travelling.

The problem is that a SIP service cannot be logged into from more than one place. So, how to control which SIP service is active on which OBi device?? Right now the only way I have found is to put a fake password into the password field on OBiTalk for the account(s) that should be disabled on a particular device. That's crude.

A much nicer solution would be to put a simple "Enabled" check box next to each service provider in a device's ObiTalk "Device Configuration" page, before the garbage can (delete button) in the "Configure Voice Service Providers (SP)" area.

Please? Thanks!

[jimates]

The enable button is there, just deeper. In the Obi Expert configuration -> Voice Service -> SP1 Service. It's at the top of the list.

[Warren]

The enable button is there, just deeper. In the Obi Expert configuration -> Voice Service -> SP1 Service. It's at the top of the list.

So it is! Missed it. THANK YOU.