magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Hacks

QMaverick · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 7

I know that this has been discussed at some point--but I'm relatively new to the forum and I can't seem to find an answer to my problem.

So I'm fairly certain that my exterior phone line to my house is disconnected (mostly because I can't actually find the box--I think the people that lived there before me actually removed it to put their deck in) and I plugged my MagicJack into a wall outlet phone jack. I picked up the cordless phone which I had plugged into a different phone jack elsewhere in the house and I was psyched to hear the dial tone. However, I had an odd problem.

I called my number and hit the pick-up button on my cordless only to hear MagicJack ringing in the receiver. I had to click the "Answer" button on my computer screen to pick up the call. This, obviously, is not going to work for me as I want the MagicJack wired to my whole house just as I would have a normal phone line set up.

So, anyone have any ideas? This humble noob would greatly appreciate it. Very Happy

Matt9876 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 504

Lets go back a few steps here, First try your main phone connected directly to the magic jack and see if it works properly. "Hearing part of the ringing noise "wav file" when picking up the phone is normal but it should stop and connect you as normal.

Test phone lines with an ohm meter if you still get the same issue when connected to the house lines. "between red/green or blue/blue-white you should have no voltage and open lines when magicjack is not connected " if other find and disconnect what ever is causing the problem.

Good Luck. Smile

QMaverick · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 7

so you think it's a voltage problem? I'll try to borrow an ohm meter today from work and see what happens. I appreciate the tip. Smile

Yeah, it's strange, when the phone is directly connected to the MagicJack I get full functionality no problem--so I'm sure it has something to do with the crappy wiring in my house. The guy that lived there before me was not exactly what you'd call a genius....

Matt9876 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 504

It is important to find where the phone company lines were connected and make sure they are disconnected and insulated.

Make sure they don't hook to a ground block or other device, make sure the wires are not in contact with each other,etc.

I have 3 Phones and a DirecTV HD box connected, It works fine.

QMaverick · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 7

so, if this rather clever gentleman that lived there DID just remove the box, do you have any tips on finding where it may have been so I could find out where the phone company lines were connected?

Matt9876 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 504

If you find two main wires at each jack they are most likely all chained together if you can find the first one and disconnect the one line that comes from the phone company you are done ! Smile

"note last jack in chain will only have one wire"

If you only have one main line to each phone jack there is a main junction point,you must find and disconnect the phone company's lines a that point.

Once again,Good Luck Smile

JimBakkerShow · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 29 Aug 2008 Posts: 1

Matt9876 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 504

I'm talking about the last phone jack (1) main wire/cable with 4 conductors red,green,yellow,black or the six conductor kind with blue,blue-white,etc.

Chained phone jacks normally have 4 conductors in and 4 out.

Phone jacks off a central distribution normally have 4 conductors. "red,green Line#1/yellow,black Line#2"

Sorry for any confusion.

monkeyboy · MagicJack User Joined: 21 Apr 2008 Posts: 42

while I haven't tried "hard", I believe that the MJ's driving capabilities to be substandard.

I casually tried to drive my house wiring with my MJ... it didn't work.
An Xlink (BT/cell box) under the same conditions drives my house wiring just fine (it is currently what we use to connect all our house phones to a Sprint cell phone).

The MJ seems to be just on the edge of driving one phone... not sure it can deal with driving a large houseful of phones, with all the wiring (mostly capacitance), etc. A previous MJ of my failed (burned out ?) after a few months, couldn't even drive a single cordless phone (that it used to drive just fine). In another thread, there is speculation that a specific chip is prone to burnout (symptoms are that you get a dialtone, but cannot dialout with DTMFs). So overall I'm hesitant to put my MJ through a the stress of driving my house wiring... particularly since it is HELL HELL to deal with MJ customer support to get a replacement MJ.

Matt9876 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 504

Running HP XE783 as wireless MagicJack server,15 foot cord to wall jack in bed room from MJ unit,running Vtech house phone 5.8GHZ,G/E wall phone in kitchen with caller ID,AT&T desk phone in office, DirecTV HD receiver unit in living room for caller ID and pay per views.

House phone wires were removed from outside Telco box back when Vonage was hooked up.

Everything works great. Smile

PS: Suspect some people need to be running a powered USB hub for whole house MJ operation.

aaronwt · magicJack Apprentice Joined: 08 Jan 2009 Posts: 13

Upgrade to the Xlink BTTN so you can attach the MJ line along with your cellphones to the Xlink box.

trek101 · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:39 pm Post subject:

A few reasons NOT to use MJ dongle to back feed dial tone for the entire house:

The MJ dongle has an open circuit (on-hook) voltage around 24 volts DC and is not sufficient to support more than one phone at any given time. Standard telco voltage is 48 volts DC.

The impedance and capacitance of house wiring varies greatly which the MJ dongle will not handle too well at all; especially echo cancellation and touch-tone recognistion.

REN (ringer equivalence number) generally too low to support multiple phones ringing at the same time. Reasons stated above point can make it even worse; sparing the long theory about why.

The risk of blowing out your MJ dongle if your bell provider still has voltage on the house telco wiring; then you will have (insert colourful metaphor here) to get a replacement dongle dealing with text support.

In a nut-shell, do your homework and just pickup an ATA from your friendly neighbourhood eBay. Search around the forums on how to program it properly. At least an ATA is more forgiving on the "oops" factor if you connect it to a live telephone line compared to the dongle.

If you have an ATA and want to tackle the challenge of back feeding dial to all of your jacks. Have a Volt-Ohm meter handy to verify that you have successfully disconnected your telco provider at the demark and brush up on your telco colour codes:

Pair 1 = blue/blue white
Pair 2 = orange/orange white
Pair 3 = green/green white
Pair 4 = brown/brown white

Alternate colour codes:

Pair 1 = red/green
Pair 2 = yellow/black
Pair 3 = blue/white
Pair 4 = brown/slate

Just remember Google is your best friend...

margate11 · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 26 Jan 2009 Posts: 2

Dumb question maybe but I would like to know. If you use ATT as your provider and you disconnect the incoming line so you can run two jacks on your house wiring, how are you receiving DSL with no incoming lines? Thanks

ng12345 · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 25 Jan 2009 Posts: 7

i'm sorry --- just reading this thread and very interested in wiring my whole house to magicjack.

currently we tried running a cordless base system off of magicjack (to 8 handsets), and it worked fine.

i wanted to hook it up to all the house wiring, currently our house jacks are connected to our cable operator -- so the wire goes into our cable modem.

i noticed the caveats you mentioned about varying voltage:

what is an ATA? i'm assuming it is the vonage voip box, but what does it stand for, so i can look it up on ebay?

edit: i found it searching "ata telephone"
-- is this device sufficient?
http://cgi.ebay.com/CISCO-ATA-186-VoIP-ANALOG-TELEPHONE-ADAPTER-2-PORT_W0QQitemZ110341716574QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_Telecom_IP_Telephony?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

are there recommended brands/products?

magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Hacks

Using House Wiring with MagicJack