Vonage + Brinks - Success! (finally)

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 12

I finally got Vonage to work with Brinks, at least for now.

For the past several weeks the Brinks control panel has been flashing an error message, "CR Trouble call 1800...."). And once a day it would start beeping. I have been reluctant to call Brinks to send out a tech because I don't want to spend $45 and I felt this might be a recurring problem. Plus the system was working fine, I called them the first day I noticed it and they told me it should go away within 24 hours and that it is still operational (and to call them if it still showed problems after 24 hrs). I ended up going away for the holidays and couldn't deal with it. I got home, it was still flashing the error message. Again, I didn't want to call Brinks and wanted to see if I could figure this out on my own, even if it meant getting a traditional land line (POTS). Apparently the Brinks system has been trying to dial in the the Brinks "mother ship" to download/update information. Keep in mind, my test calls ALWAYS went through.

Well, the error message went away today! The call/download finally succeded!

You can read more info about my success with Tivo dialing out in this thread. A lot of it pertains to this experience with Brinks: http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2283.html

Here's the details of how I got it working (i was not expecting it, I just noticed the panel didn't beep at all today and the error message was gone)

You'll notice in the Tivo thread I mention I was going to move the Vonage back to an output on the router to see if the Tivo works in that setup. Well it so happened right about the time I went to move the Vonage box Brinks decided to dial out. As soon as the Vonage box was rebooted and hooked into the last port (4) of my d-link router, the call went through in full.

Here's what made it work for me:

-fresh reboot of router, cable modem, and Vonage box

-packet size reduced to .10 (see tivo thread, i had called Vonage to do this)

-Vonage box plugged into the last port of the router

If you want to try this and want to time it like i did (again, i didn't do it on purpose, it was pure coincidence -- but maybe that's what helped it go through), I did decode the dialing sequence of the alarm system. I determined Brinks tried 4 calls every 4 hours by checking my Vonage activity (you can check yours to see if the sequence is similar).

For example, it would try at 3:21am, 3:23am, 3:25am, and 3:27am. Then it would try at 7:27am, 7:29am, 7:31am, and 7:33am... then 11:33am, 11:35am, 11:37am, and 11:39am, and so on. It was always the same sequence, every day.

I had not planned it, but it worked. The call that went through was 3 minutes, so it stayed connected at least that long to download the necessary data.

Hope this helps anybody who might be having this problem.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 12

....previous post edited....

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 01, 2005 Posts: 26

that's funny, I have no phone line hooked up in my house at all, no Vonage, and I have a Brinks system installed but no monitoring turned on. Every night at like 1:30am, my keypad starts beeping and I have to get out of bed, run downstairs and hit the cancel button. The keypad keeps saying Trouble call the 1-800 number for Brinks. Well I called Brinks and they said the only way to stop this beeping is to sign up for monitoring service with them OR totally power down the system which I eventually had to do because I couldn't take the beeping. So bascially they don't even allow you to use just the local alarm without paying for monitoring service (RIP OFF!!).... if anybody found a way to stop this beeping WITHOUT having a phone line or Brinks monitoring hooked up, please let me know... thanks

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jan 11, 2005 Posts: 70

Congrats! I'm fighting the same battle with my DTiVo's. Do you use the *99 following the 104 code or in the call waiting prefix? Also, when you mentioned reboot, was that of the adapter or the tivo?

Also, what do you get for a ping time if you do a...

ping yahoo.com -t

?? Mine is between 50-60 and I have my packet setting at .1. I cannot get things working!

Thanks!

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 12

Kash76 wrote:

Congrats! I'm fighting the same battle with my DTiVo's. Do you use the *99 following the 104 code or in the call waiting prefix? Also, when you mentioned reboot, was that of the adapter or the tivo?

Also, what do you get for a ping time if you do a...

ping yahoo.com -t

?? Mine is between 50-60 and I have my packet setting at .1. I cannot get things working!

Thanks!

Hi,

I ended up NOT needing any prefix for the Directivo. However, I think I had those numbers input in the same line, seperated my commas. But I THINK I also tried them one at a time.

Also, what does the ping function do? My connection is not running through my Vonage...

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2008 Posts: 1

I've been struggling to get my Brinks Home Security system to work with my Vonage phone line for about a week now...UNTIL Last night. I read many different theories, many different complicated fixes but so far this is the easiest and only fix that has worked for me. After hooking up my Vonage, my Brinks would not be able to communicate through the phone, let alone pass the Line test that would pass over my regular phone wiring. After speaking with Brinks and them stating that they would need to install additional hardware and reprogram my Securty system board which was going to cost me $65 for the first hour and then $30 for every 15 minutes there after. I told them they could just send me the part and since i'm a computer technician myself, I would feel comfortable installing it and see if that worked. They gave no clear answer or interest in that, and iI wasn't ready to pay that much for what seemed like a simple fix.

I just hope this helps many people out there that are trying to figure this out. It's simple really. Swap each pair of lines with each wire in the pair. So in my case I have only one line, and I use the orange and orange white wires. Since I ran a new line from my V-Portal or Vonage device to the NID, which is the box where your phone company connects their wiring to your homes wiring. I ran a new cat3 wire to there and connected the orange to orange and white orange to the white orange to the original home wiring. Since I had already crimped the other end, I remember reading a post somewhere stating I should try to swap the wires and it might work. So in my case, it worked perfectly. I connected the orange to the white orange and vice-versa. Now I've also read somewhere that many Brinks Home Security systems(even recently or newer models) still use the "pulse dialing" method, and from what I understand Vonage doesn't support Pulse. Now it makes no sense to me on why Brinks would do such a thing, but I knew I wasn't ready to pay that $100+ bill they were going to make up for me.

So I hope this post will truly benefit people that are trying to research this, as I couldn't find a confirmed post regarding this fix. I hope this will fix most of the problems, but as I also understand any one system is not the similar to any other system. I would be glad to assist any one from my experience as we are all here to save some money!

P.S. Talking to Vonage and requesting to change my packet size and call quality on their end made my service worse(i.e. dropped calls) so I asked to revert my settings to original. Try different combinations of everything for troubleshooting. Good Luck.