Concord 4 on VoIP -- weird phone failure


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Old 07-30-19, 06:55 AM
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Concord 4 on VoIP -- weird phone failure

Hi all,
We are looking into options to dump Verizon land line, but keep alarm monitoring. I'm trying out Ooma, which seems to have the best luck with alarms.

So far it works great for voice and was easy to install. They have an alarm mode which is supposed to support a high-bandwidth compression protocol for faxes and alarms and uses a standard dialtone.

So I wire it up, test on voice, and go to test the alarm.

Seems to grab the line fine, call log shows it dialing out, but it dials out like 7 to 10 times, each time for about 11 to 19 seconds. Weird thing is, I get a confirmation about the phone test from the monitoring company, but the alarm reports a failure and obviously keeps trying to dial out.

So it seems the dial tone and initial part of the call work fine. It obviously sends enough info to the monitoring company to trigger a message (which would have to be my account number and that it's doing a phone test), but for whatever reason barfs later in the call and tries again.

Any idea of other things to try? Router settings, maybe a setting on the C4? I posted a similar request on the Ooma forum but haven't heard back. There are success stories of getting alarms to work with this and my Fios was Voip, if a bit more cleanly integrated.

Help appreciated!
 
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Old 07-30-19, 11:25 AM
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Trying to use an alarm with Ooma generally isn't a very good idea.
 
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Old 07-31-19, 05:10 AM
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I did read of people having success with other alarms, but none specifically with the Concord 4. Ooma has an alarm mode with a high-bandwidth compression (same as what Fios and cable companies use, if I understood things). I figured it was worth a try.

I put the Ooma Telo right on the alarm panel, no extra wiring and got similar results. A few 40 second calls and a few 15 second calls, all threw a Phone Error on the panel, but a couple (probably the longer calls) showed as a success to the central monitoring.

So it's weird that the comms are so close to working, but without advanced error codes and such, there's no way for me to troubleshoot on this end. I'll try a bit longer, but it's probably going back to Amazon if I don't get the alarm working.

I e-mailed their customer support, but haven't heard back yet.

I still welcome any thoughts as to what I can change, but I'm pretty sure any problems are on the Ooma side, not the C4.
 
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Old 07-31-19, 05:55 AM
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Alarms can work over VOIP, but from everything i've read, Ooma is one to avoid. IMO, if at all possible, it's best to just avoid going the VOIP route.
 
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Old 07-31-19, 03:07 PM
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Alarm communication is actually 2 way (in a minor sort of way). The alarm dialer has to get a signal back from the receiver for every data transmission (which is called a "kiss off").

Many data derived telephone solutions _send_ well enough; but have too much lag, compression, or interference to get the signal _back_ cleanly enough for the system to accept it.
 
 

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