Antique Phones and VOIP (Pulse to tone)

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 25, 2005 Posts: 26

There are products out there that convert pulse to DTMF (touch tone) but they are all astronomically high for the parts contained in them. They run $49 plus shipping (or there abouts) to get an old/antique pulse (rotary dial) phone to be able to dial out with Vonage. I don't suppose this will be a popular post because how many tech-ies that can handle VOIP concepts also appreciate the finer points of "ancient" telephony but I'm emploring anyone that has a good feel for tone generation and some curcuit board knowledge to come up with a cheap alternative. I have found very rudimentary circuit board diagrams to do what I need but for a different application that I don't have the background enough to adopt to my scenario but seem extremely simple as circuit boards go. Far simpler than the AM/FM radio I made in my childhood. I can't be the only one interested. These things should run about $3 in materials and I'm willing to pay $20 for them. I'm sure I sound cheap but paying $50+ to get some old phones working on a system that is suppost to be saving me money over the big company alternative just seems against principal. If I wanted to spend money to get things working the way I want them I would have stuck with Verizon to begin with.

Posts: 1422 · Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject:

A post from voip-info might be of interest to you. It suggests attempting to use a Mitel Smart-1 dialer (approx $18 ) to do the pulse to DTMF conversion. I think the price in that post was off though.

Another option would be to use a pocket tone dialer. These used to be quite common for controlling answering machines from rotary phones. I am not personally recommending the TD-122 KXT-41 Tone Dialer but post it here as an example ($10). I know this is kind of a bummer drag solution.

One other option is a separate keypad that is connected to the phone wiring like the Touch Tone Dialer Kit (sold out). While again not the ideal solution, it is a workable one.

Are you trying to preserve rotary dialing, or just keep the older phones? There are other external keypads like the one above that might give you added functions like speed dial, emergency numbers and caller id.

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 25, 2005 Posts: 26

I'm very interested in keeping the rotary function. Although I'm sure it won't be the phone I use when big news hits and I have to call ALL my friends and family but there is a pleasant nostalgia to using it to call for pizza delivery or to check voicemail as its stationary and therefore always by a pad of paper and a pen on the antique phone chair/table I've inherited. I've always loved mixing old with the new so its cool to talk on a phone twice or more my age on a system that wasn't even imagined until 50 some odd years after the phones debut but it would take it to the next level of cool to be able to dial out using the lost art of "Twirling". I have found another site that has a brand new box made just for this application. Again its $50 but its plug and play and can be plugged in just after the ATA to feed your enitre house of rotary conversion. I'm gonna have to stop being cheap and just get it. The MItel thing is considerably more expensive now because they are in high demand as they stopped production several years ago. I got this info directly from Mitel (who also makes the new boxes) who told me the smart dialer is crap and chances are even if i get one that is very close to new it will only last a few months before it craps out.

The link to the inline box if anyone else is interested is http://www.dialerbuddy.com/requestinfo.htm and choose the product LPT300. Its brand brand new so they don't have a data sheet or anything online for it.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 12, 2006 Posts: 1

Cozzman, did you end up trying the LPT300 from Mitel (dialerbuddy.com) with your phone adapter? I have several antique phones and am planning to start using VoIP with them. Looking for solutions, and the LPT300 was the only thing I've found so far. Did you have any luck? Does it work well?

Also, I have heard that Linksys now makes a VoIP router that supports rotary dial phones. Vonage told me this; it is the one they're giving away free for new customers.

Posts: 1422 · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:42 am Post subject:

Check out Can rotary dial...? where member claudeo happily discovered his adapter, an RPT-300, handled pulse dialing.

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 25, 2005 Posts: 26

I apoligize I haven't been responding to this. I forgot all about it and for some reason have been missing the notifications of replys. I did get a fix that cost me almost nothing except a cheap FXO PC Card off ebay and a junker PC I had laying around.

Asterisk@Home at http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net will interface with Vonage (using an FXO Port) and hopefully in the future you can convince Vonage that using the Wifi phone account you can connect the Asterisk directly to Vonage using SIP. It will acept pulse and resend it out as Tone. Works awesome.

Posts: 26 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 25, 2005 Posts: 26

That's pretty cool about the RPT300 though. I have an old Cisco that has been buggy lately. Maybe I'll upgrade so I have the capabilities in the future without having to run a PC (even though I like the fax to e-mail and autoattendant functions)

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 08, 2007 Posts: 2

Cozzman wrote:

The link to the inline box if anyone else is interested is http://www.dialerbuddy.com/requestinfo.htm and choose the product LPT300. Its brand brand new so they don't have a data sheet or anything online for it.

They have a new version of the LPT300 that doesnt pass pulse along with the dtmf.
VOIP Pulse to Tone Adapter

Posts: 120 · Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 5:02 am Post subject: Rotary Dial

I have an old american rotary dial phone in my kitchen, and it works fine with Vonage on the Motorola VT2142 router.....although my old Linksys RT31P2 did'nt like it.
Ensure that when you dial you are not sloppy and turn the dial to its full stop point as the router does'nt always listen to it and you get occasional
'call not registered' errors.