Remote (phone) access to M1G

[lugnut]

I'm going to cancel my voice mail thru the phone company and get a stand-alone box, since my phone company voice mail does not allow me to pick the number of rings, which is kind of a problem. For whatever reason they won't guarantee the number of rings it picks up at, and it can vary plus or minus several rings. Sometimes it transfers to the phone company voice mail before you even hear a ring on the phone you're calling in from, and obviously the ELK can't be set to deal with that, even if you check Global 30 (ring/hangup/answer).

But this got me thinking, I can add a service to my landline called "custom ring" and this costs a few bucks a month. You can get up to 3 custom rings, and each custom ring is assigned a different phone number (but they all still ring the same landline). It's not a second line, it's more like having several "aliases" for your phone line, with each of the assigned numbers resulting in a different ring pattern.

If you didn't give your custom ring number out to anyone, and if the ELK could be programmed to learn the custom ring, it seems that dealing with answering machines would not be an issue. The ELK could just answer only the custom ring, and answer on the first ring.

Just a thought for a future capability...

 

[upstatemike]

I use this method for my fax machine so it will have a dedicated number. I have a box on the line ahead of the fax machine that can distinguish between the different rings and only direct fax calls to the fax machine . Works flawlessly.

 

[lugnut]

I use this method for my fax machine so it will have a dedicated number. I have a box on the line ahead of the fax machine that can distinguish between the different rings and only direct fax calls to the fax machine . Works flawlessly.

Hi Mike, is this a box you designed yourself, or something commercially available?
If the latter, do you have a manufacturer/part number and/or a link to it?

 

[RobWalker]

I use this method for my fax machine so it will have a dedicated number. I have a box on the line ahead of the fax machine that can distinguish between the different rings and only direct fax calls to the fax machine . Works flawlessly.

Hi Mike, is this a box you designed yourself, or something commercially available?
If the latter, do you have a manufacturer/part number and/or a link to it?

Something like this faxswitch would do the job.

 

[upstatemike]

I use this method for my fax machine so it will have a dedicated number. I have a box on the line ahead of the fax machine that can distinguish between the different rings and only direct fax calls to the fax machine . Works flawlessly.

Hi Mike, is this a box you designed yourself, or something commercially available?
If the latter, do you have a manufacturer/part number and/or a link to it?

Something like this faxswitch would do the job.

The SR2 is the exact model I am using.

 

[lugnut]

It turns out the M1G has a nice unexpected feature regarding custom rings. It does almost what I was asking about.

My first ring (for my primary phone number) is a sequence of longer rings.
My secondary custom ring (for the custom ring number) is a sequence of 2 shorter rings with a fraction of a second between the two.

The M1G counts the 2 shorter rings as 2 separate rings, whereas my answering machine counts it as one.

So I can set my answering machine to pick up after 4 rings, and the M1G to pick up after 5 rings.

The M1G will never pick up when the primary number is called, because it never gets to 5 rings since the answering machine picks up at 4 rings.

But the M1G picks up the secondary ring (from the second "alias" phone number) after what is actually only 2-1/2 full rings, but it counts 5 separate rings due to the small delay between them.