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DoorBell Fon difficulties

I have been using my DoorBell Fon for some time now. All has been well with it. There is just one thing I wish I could do that should work.

I am only able to talk on the intercom if the call is initiated from the intercom box. If someone knocks on the door, rather than ring the bell, I am not able to speak to them or unlock the door. The instructions say to pick up the phone and hit flash. That does not work for me. If it makes a difference, I'm actually using it on door 2 since that was the only way I could get a distinctive ring on my phone. I've tried pushing flash more than once with no change. (Supposedly, if connected to D2, you need to hit flash twice. But that doesn't make a difference.)

My usual phone is a cordless phone system. I had assumed this was part of the problem, but I tried plugging in a very simple, corded phone. I unplugged the other phones for this test to make sure there was no interference from the system or simply too many phones.

I asked this question of tech support for the DoorBell Fon and it took three weeks to get an answer that basically amounts to, "it works. You must not be hitting flash twice." Even without this feature working, I love the product. I'm not thrilled with tech support. Since I've seen a number of people in this group talking about it, I was hoping someone here would have a suggestion for me. the problem I've run into is the large number of people that don't want to press the call button because it doesn't look like a traditional doorbell. So they pound on the door.

Reply to
Larry Moss
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First, consider a small placard that says "Doorbell" mounted by the button. That might solve your problem best. Doing the the double flash right is a matter of timing. Try doing it as Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock (2 seconds total). Failing that you might want to go back to using Door 1 and asking the factory (ask to speak to Paul) for a different chip with different ring options. Paul also has various mods to do different things (like operate different gate locks with # and *). Be sure to speak to him directly about the problem.

From:Larry Moss snipped-for-privacy@airigami.com

Reply to
BruceR

maybe polarity on the phone line.

Reply to
Chub

No. Everything else works properly. It just doesn't acknowledge the flash. (I did check anyway.) Thanks anyway. I'll do as Bruce suggested and wait until Monday to call and see what other solutions Paul has.

Reply to
Larry Moss

polarity on a phone line is counter intuitive. why they do it that way, I don't know. Red is minus -, and green is plus +.

Reply to
Chub

That's always been a bit confusing which is one of the reasons the red/green and other solid colors are being abandoned. Red is for Ring which is not the ringing of the bell but the ring conductor (between tip ans sleeve) of the phone plug invented in the late 1800's. There's an interesting history at:

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for those curious.

From:Chub snipped-for-privacy@bb.tt

Reply to
BruceR

I've been meaning to post a follow up on this all week, but this being a crazy week, that just never seemed to happen. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to work with two flashes. That was with multiple phones. I did call the company and spoke with Paul. He just kept insisting that it would come with practice. The person that needs this most has physical limitations. If I couldn't work out the timing, there's no way she can, no matter how much practice goes into it. I told him that too. Is there more than one Paul there?

I did go back to door 1. It does work with one flash. I asked about other ring options but he was quite insistant that they couldn't offer any other solutions and that I'd learn to distinguish the difference between a phone call and the Doorbell Fon. I haven't sampled the ring pattern and analyzed it on a computer, but they sound quite the same to me. Paul insisted that the DoorBell Fon would ring 1 second on, 1 second off. It's most assuredly not doing that. I believe it's 1 on, 3 off. It was set to door 2 while I was on the phone with him, so it wouldn't have helped to ring it during the call. I may call back after the holidays and do just that. Right now the only way to tell the difference is that the caller id reads "incoming call" when the doorbell fon is ringing, so you have to pick up the phone to know if it's someone at the door or someone calling. Not the end of the world, but it would be nice to have it working properly.

Reply to
Larry Moss

Only one Paul there that I know of. Check the Sandman catalog for other ringing chips. See this:

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BTW, the Sandman catalog is an excellent source of all things needed for cabling, paging and telco stuff.

From:Larry Moss snipped-for-privacy@airigami.com

Reply to
BruceR

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