Another Brinks Vonage Scenario

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 1

Scenario:

Brinks alarm hardwired to telco interface with its own cable direct from Brinks alarm box.

Vonage single line phone service with Motorola ATA using cable service, not DSL.

I disconnected the telco connections to the customer side of the telco network interface box and then connected the Motorola ATA to a phone jack in my house. Now all phone jacks in the house have dial tone but Brinks alarm cannot pass test dial.

1. If I get the secondary "fax" line option on Vonage and run a cable from the fax line to the Brinks box will the alarm be able to dial out? Has anyone tried this?

2. Can I use a line splitter (connected to the back of the Moto ATA) and have one line go into a house phone jack to keep all the phone jacks live in the house and then run the other line from the splitter to the Brinks alarm box? Is this a solution?

Thanks

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: May 28, 2004 Posts: 9

I think that would work, although there's a cheaper and easier way. Here's the setup I have for ADT. I have a phone splitter coming out of ATA box - one goes to phone in that room and one goes to phone jack. From that phone wire in the basement, I went to the alarm phone connections and then from the alarm phone connections back to the parallel connection for all the other phone wires in the house so that all the other phone jacks in the house are live. Obviously, I've completely disconnected the phone company wiring on the box outside my house by disconnecting the jack.

Someone else posted this link in the forum and you may find it helpful:

http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 1

I found the links from this thread (and others from google) informative yet confusing and decided to try something different. This worked for me although I'm not sure how safe/reliable it is. What it does is simply flip-flop the circuit that the alarm system breaks when it places the call.

My situation: My Brinks alarm system was installed in late 2003 with a normal phone system. When I installed VOIP in 2004, my alarm system obviously stopped working evidenced by Brink's Control Panel TEST failing. When I called Brinks to explain I'd switched to VOIP they were OK with VOIP but wanted to charge $75 minimum for "the part and a technician to install it." So rather than funnel more money over to Brinks, I decided to try to fix this myself.

Side note: After utterly atrocious call quality, rude customer service, uninformed, condescending and irritating technical support not to mention HOURS of waiting on-hold with CallVantage, I switched to Vonage and couldn't be happier. Vonage is missing a few features that CallVantage has, but it has far superior support, customer service and voice quality.

Preamble: When wired normally with the phone company the alarm system when it calls out will cut off any calls or phones left off the hook in the house and connect directly to the outside line, bypassing whatever problem that might be inside the house. However this is the exact opposite of what you want to have happen with a house wired for VOIP.

So instead of cutting off the circuit from the alarm to the home, this simple step will cause the alarm system to disconnect the connection between the alarm box and the NIB (which presumably is already disconnected from the phone company.)

Your VOIP system needs to be connected to a jack in the house and therefore all the phone wiring in your house should be live.

Do this: Inside the beige RJ31X jack that's probably hanging outside the box for your alarm system is a set of RED, GREEN, BLACK and YELLOW wires. All you need to do is unscrew each wire from the jack and swap the RED and YELLOW, and also swap the BLACK and GREEN wires. (All you really need to do is swap one set, but swapping both will ensure it will work despite which set of wires your installer chose to use for each connection.)

So before you did this, each wire was connected to the screw with the same color wire, now you should have it so the RED wire connects to YELLOW screw, the YELLOW wire connects to the RED screw; the GREEN wire connects to the BLACK screw, and the BLACK wire connects to the GREEN screw.

Again, please note that if you have a phone off the hook in the house or are in the middle of a call when your alarm goes off, you are disabling the ability of your alarm system to take over your phone line. For me, I can't imagine a scenario when I would be on the phone when the alarm went off, and frankly if I was, I wouldn't want the alarm system disconnecting me from whomever I was talking to in the case of an emergency!

So here's a diagram of what you're doing, assuming you've pulled the jack from the NIB outside your house to accommodate VOIP:

Before (no alarm):
VOIP <--> HOME <--> ALARM SYS <--> NIB -/- PHONE COMPANY

Before (during alarm):
VOIP <--> HOME -/- ALARM SYS <--> NIB -/- PHONE COMPANY
-- alarm has nowhere to go!

After (no alarm):
VOIP <--> HOME <--> ALARM SYS <--> NIB -/- PHONE COMPANY

After (during alarm):
VOIP <--> HOME <--> ALARM SYS -/- NIB -/- PHONE COMPANY
-- alarm disconnects the already-dead circuit to the NIB and dials out on your VOIP system

I hope this works for you! Some threads & other sites mention issues with VOIP call quality not allowing the alarm system to communicate properly with Brinks monitoring. I've tested this 4 times, even while listening in over another phone and each test succeeded.

Don't forget to switch this back if you ever go back to "normal" phone service!

- Mixx

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 04, 2005 Posts: 4

I've got an ADT Alarm system hooked up to my house and also Vonage.

If you don't hooke up the alarm system correctly, you bypass one of the features of the system. When the alarm goes off, you have about 15 seconds to turn it off before the system calls out to report the alarm. With the alarm wired as mentioned in this thread, someone could break in to your home and simply pick up the phone to prevent the call going to your central monitoring station. Now, how likely is this? I don't know - but since I already have an alarm system I figure I already think something MIGHT happen - better to protect yourself.

To fix the problem you have to go from your Vonage Interface--> Alarm System --> rest of the house.

I've done this in my house and it is worth the bit of extra effort (in my opinion)