Phone Fault

[rjsmith0]

I had a storm come through yesterday in the middle of which my Elk M1G announced Telephone fault. There weren't any lightning strikes at the time and I still had a dial tone on my phones (not going through the Elk), but I disconnected the Elks phone line just to be safe. After the storm, I am still getting the phone fault error and my Elk won't dial out.

I did the following to troubleshoot:

1. I get a dial tone if I connect a phone directly to the line going into the M1G.

2. If I connect the line to the Elk and then the phone to the lineout and pick up the phone, sounds like an open circuit (no dial tone) and it doesn't respond to telephone commands. I do hear the relay click on the M1G indicating it detects the phone went off-hook, but thats it.

3. I tested both with a phone connected and disconnected to R1/T1 (lineout)

4. None of my dialout rules work. I even created a keypad button just to test.

5. I defaulted the entire M1 and reloaded. Didn't make a difference.

All other functions work perfectly. It just won't dialout and I cannot use local or remote phone control. I am tempted to connect a line directly from where the phone comes into the building to the M1G. Currently it goes through a junction, but I don't think that will make a difference since I have dial-tone. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Obviously I am trying to avoid having to send this thing back for repair/replacement. Although it is less than a year old (purchased from AO), if it was caused by a surge, I don't think it is covered by warranty. Combine that with the fact that I am going on vacation in a week (when I need it most). If I do have to send it back, does Elk have an advanced replacement procedure?

I did call Elk support. The tech suggested I send it in for repair if none of the above tests worked, but I thought I would check here for any other ideas before I took that step.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[Steve]

Wow, that stinks. I don't know how much help I can be but maybe a few things?

1. When you say you 'defaulted and reloaded' I imagine you turned it off, waited a few seconds and turned it back on?

2. When you take a phone connected off hook (even though you say there is no dialtone) can you press '***'. If you do, does the Telco seized light (left side middle) come on? It should come on after you enter '***'.

3. Do you have DSL? Is there a filter or anything else plugged into it?

I know its not much, but anyway...

 

[rjsmith0]

1. When you say you 'defaulted and reloaded' I imagine you turned it off, waited a few seconds and turned it back on?

I did turn it off and back on, but when I say "defaulted and reloaded", I mean I defaulted all settings to factory using the keypad Global settings. Then I connected to it and uploaded my configuration again.

2. When you take a phone connected off hook (even though you say there is no dialtone) can you press '***'. If you do, does the Telco seized light (left side middle) come on? It should come on after you enter '***'.

When I press '***', nothing happens. I am glad you suggested the Telco light though, because I noticed the TELCO LIGHT IS ON ALL THE TIME, even when I disconnect everything. This may just be an indicator for "phone fault" though.

3. Do you have DSL? Is there a filter or anything else plugged into it?

Actually I have IFITL which is a little different than DSL in that it comes in as a separate line so no filters are required.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Joe

 

[Steve]

Here is what is says about the Telco Seized light:

Phone line is good and house phones are connected. If ON constantly, the phone
line may be bad. During remote mode this LED will be ON since the house phones
are then disconnected from the outside line & are being powered from control.

I thought I remember reading somewhere about low voltage on phone lines, like the voltage could be lower than it should be (48V?) and stuff would work intermittently? I could be all wrong, but maybe it would be worthwhile to measure the voltage at the M1?

And are you taking the telco straight into the M1 or going thru the RJ31X? If so, maybe you should try going straight in and see what happens?

I know you probably know all this but its all I can think of...

 

[rjsmith0]

I am going straight into the M1 now. I was wondering about voltage.

I checked the voltage and I am getting 43.9 volts everywhere. I disconnected my house at the outside junction box and I am getting 43.9 volts from the phone company also. Could this be the problem? How low is too low?

Does the Elk disable phone features if it thinks there is a phone fault or does it try them anyway if it can? Is there a way to turn off phone line fault detection?

thanks,

Joe

 

[mustangcoupe]

Do you have a long phone cord and a friendly neighbor?

 

[rjsmith0]

Good idea, but I called Elk again and they had me run another test 86-Diagnostics which shows lastonhookvoltage which it says is 0V, so it isn't seeing anything apparently. Looks like I will be sending it in Tuesday. Hopefully it is something simple.

Note to self: INSTALL PHONE SURGE PROTECTION FOR ELK!

thanks all for your help!

Joe

 

[Spanky]

If you are reading a voltage on the telephone line terminals but the Last On Hook Voltage says 0 volts, then something is open on the board. It could be the relay contacts or a component. Probably took some kind of surge.

 

[huggy59]

I have fixed numerous modems over the course of my career that no longer worked by simply replacing the on/off-hook relay, possibly due to either magnetizing of the contacts, a surge, or typical point wear. Hopefully that's all it is on the M1, too. It would be interesting to know what they find.

 

[mustangcoupe]

some manufacturers also put in a 1 ohm 1/4 watt resistor in series with the phone line to act as a fuse. (I test modems for FCC approvals and for one of the surge/lightning tests they must fail in a safe manner so the line tech cant get hurt)

 

[rjsmith0]

I just got my repaired M1G back from Elk today and it is working perfectly now. I have to say that was amazing turnaround time from Elk.

Tuesday: Sent it UPS Next Day.

Wednesday: Received UPS email notification that it was delivered at 9:10am. Received a phone call from Elk at 11:06am telling me it was repaired and they were shipping it back.

Thursday: I received and installed it.

The tech who worked on it was not available today, but I am supposed to find out tomorrow exactly what the problem was.

Even though I was only without it for less than 2 days it is amazing how much you come to rely on it. I actually had to do figure out how to do everything manually all over again (I had almost forgotten what the light switches and thermostats were for...).

Joe

 

[Digger]

Dam that is fast!!!!!!!!!!! Makes me glad I chose the M1.

I never could get the telco on my panel to work. I always chalked it up to the VOIP that I have. Maybe I will troubleshoot mine and see if its the VOIP (I think it is) or the panel.
Just been to lazy to do some real troubleshooting lately.

 

[Mike]

If you are using cablevisions, digger, I had gotten mine working but did not do a lot of extensive testing. I was able to dial in remotely for example, and it was able to call me using rules and announce things (although it seemed I need to play with the timing).

On a related topic though, I had rerun my smoke detector wires as noted in another thread and installed two more. I had setup a rule to call me and my wife at work and via cell if the detectors went off. Well, when orignally I mixed up the incoming/outgoing wires on the detectors so it of course showed fire trouble. This triggered the rule, and apparently did enought o show many entries in the log. I suspect this is 'buffered' to a degree as my telco is seized and does not release.

I plan on resetting it tomorrow back to defaults (what was that global setting 45 getting a value of 99? Have to look that up) and reloading the programming from my pc.

Just a guess as to what it was from the way the log looked, I'll post the results, but I suspect that is all it was and it is attempting to make the calls (possibly made more difficult since I removed the rule triggering the calls).

 

[project_x]

I just got my repaired M1G back from Elk today and it is working perfectly now. I have to say that was amazing turnaround time from Elk.

Tuesday: Sent it UPS Next Day.

Wednesday: Received UPS email notification that it was delivered at 9:10am. Received a phone call from Elk at 11:06am telling me it was repaired and they were shipping it back.

Thursday: I received and installed it.

The tech who worked on it was not available today, but I am supposed to find out tomorrow exactly what the problem was.

Even though I was only without it for less than 2 days it is amazing how much you come to rely on it. I actually had to do figure out how to do everything manually all over again (I had almost forgotten what the light switches and thermostats were for...).

Joe

Joe, did you ever manage to find out what the failure was?