My alarm panel doesn't have a tip or ring!

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2009 Posts: 3

I just moved to a new house and the alarm panel (I believe it's a Napco) doesn't have any hookups labeled tip or ring on the panel where the battery is. So how am I supposed to hook this up? I had it all done nice in my old house with the old alarm system where it had those connections.

All I see on this panel are a red, green, and black labled under "remote operation" or something to that effect. Then there is an RJ45 jack that is labled RJ31x (to telco). I have two dangling twisted pairs there as well, and if I look to the right of the panel, in the central hub, again I see two dangling twisted pairs which match the same colors as the one in the alarm panel (or and or/wht, and blue and blu/wht). Then I see 6 wires coming into the hub and all connected to a punchdown thing with screws, but this punchdown is not connected to those sepearte twisted pairs.

I'm no expert, but I did this once before. This is much more complicated than the alarm I wired into before. Please help!

Posts: 183 · Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:49 pm Post subject:

Can you snap a few pictures and post them up here? It will help to understand what the setup is.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2009 Posts: 3

Can do. I will upload those this evening.

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

the basic setup of any alarm panels is

telco --> alarm panel --> rest of phones in house

so the alarm can cut off a phone in the house to make the call to the alarm center

so for Vonage you need

Vonage adapter --> alarm panel --> rest of phones in house

the panel should have an:

to telco screws / jack / wires

and a

to house screws / jack / wires

it just playing with the terminals to get everything in the right order

maybe you can find a wiring diagram online or thru tech support with your alarm co / or the panel maker

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2009 Posts: 3

Hello everyone... last night my friend came over and wired it... he's very telephone savvy and figured it out, but I really think that my case is a strange one and one of the more difficult ones anyone is going to run accross.

There is no apparent connection at the alarm panel or in the central hub to the line outside. I find that to be VERY odd. The two pairs I found that matched color and were dangling were just one wire abouit 4ft in length running between them. What my guy did was take an ethernet patch cable I had, plug one end into the rj-31x jack (it's rj45 but I believe that's the specification because it has a built-in relay), splice the other end, and run one twisted pair into the Vonage unit and one twisted pair into the punch block with screws. There were four screws in it, and he said that was for the two lines. The ones for line one were blue and white, which he figured out by opening up an outlet elsewhere in the house and seeing that red/green were connected to blue/white.

So the signal travels from the Vonage device via twisted pair into the patch cable which is connected at the rj-45 jack on the alarm panel. The inside two prongs carry the signal in from Vonage, and then, because of how the relay is wired, the signal is carried out on the other twisted pair which as I mentioned before is connected to the home phone wiring via that punch block I found with screws. If the alarm is tripped, the relay activates, cutting off the inside lines, and allowing the alarm to seize the line.

Posts: 183 · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:27 pm Post subject:

You're exactly correct. This is the exact intention of a RJ31X jack. Smile

Now just make sure you have a big UPS device on your cable modem and Vonage ATA in case the power goes out.