My MagicJack - First Look

[zerotsm]

I placed the order for my My MagicJack on Sunday evening. It arrived Thursday by First Class Mail for a total elapsed time of 4 days. Therefore I rate the delivery time to be excellent.

I installed the MagicJack on a 1.7 GHz Celeron computer with 256 MB RAM running XP Pro Service Pack 3. I'm using Comcast for my broadband connection with a stated downstream speed of 6 MBPS and an upsteam speed of 384 KBPS. For the telephone instrument, I used a good old fashioned Western Electric 2500 desk set. The install took about 3 minutes, some of that time was spent confirming my address for 911 service and picking the area code and prefix that I wanted, as well as finding out that my email address was "already registered" (done when I first ordered the MagicJack) and after several false starts figuring out that the correct option to choose was "Get a new number for this MagicJack account", or wording similar to that.

I encountered only one minor problem with the installation. At the end of the install process the system came up with the message, "install failed, please restart MagicJack". The instructions were not at all clear how to "restart" magic Jack, but I found a Restart option under Menu>Advanced Users. Executing the restart command brought up full functionality.

Calling out worked perfectly. Like a traditional land line phone, it is necessary to dial 1 first when placing a call outside of the area code. If you leave the phone off the hook, the dial tone will not time out. If you receive an incoming call when the phone is in an off the hook condition, the dial tone will be replaced with the sound of a ringing telephone. To answer the call in this situation, you must click the "accept call" button on the MagicJack program, hanging up and picking up the telephone will make the call fail.

The MagicJack does not have enough power to ring a traditional telephone bell (REN 1.0) The only indication of an incoming call when using the WE 2500 phone is the MagicJack program display on the computer, however, the phone can be picked up and the call will be answered. I then tested the MagicJack using a more modern GE phone with a REN of 0.0B. That phone rang normally.

Next step was some subjective audio quality testing. I called one of my clients who was looking for a solution to the "bad cell phone sound" for his remote broadcasts. The audio sounded good both directions, no break up, and at least as good as a land line phone. We then tested with music and noise in the background. Cell phones have the problem of "gating" when the audio is below a certain level and the cell phones have trouble digesting voice with crowd noise in the background. We simulated the crowd noise by playing music at various levels while taking on the MagicJack phone. Again, the MagicJack behaved pretty much like a traditional land line. The far end could hear both the voice and the music, and one could talk "full duplex" just like a land line. The only defect we noticed is if both ends were perfectly quiet one could hear some residual noise which sounded like QAM modulation. I'm guessing that the noise is about 40 db below max level, but that's just a guess. The next step is to preform some measurements and I'll post the results here.

[zerotsm]

OK, I did some measurements, and found a schematic for the device, or at least it's close, judging from the way it works. The RJ-11 jack has 50 volts DC when the phone is on-hook, just like a regular telephone line (OK, a regular phone line is 48 volts, but close enough). There is about 1800 ohms series resistance in the MagicJack, so the off hook voltage will be around 5-6 volts on a typical phone. The ringing is around 20 Hz, like a land line, but around 50 volts RMS. The waveform is not a sine wave by any stretch of the imagination, it's more like pulses with a fast rise time and slow decay. Looking at the schematic, it appears to be generated with 4 transistors, so that the polarity of the 50 volts DC at the RJ-11 jack is reversed at a 20Hz rate. Pretty clever, but not enough to operate an old fashioned phone bell, unless one plays with the bias spring on the bell, then one can get it to ring weakly.

It's nice that they put it in a transparent case. Inside, one can see a crystal, a BIG capacitor, an inductor, a VLIC chip (Marked "Magic Chip", which I suspect is really a Tiger 560C chip) an optoisolator, the RJ-11 jack, a surface mount transistor in a fairly large case and about 50 other assorted surface mount components. There is probably stuff on the other side of the board, but since I've only had the device in my possession for 6 hours, I'm not ready to void my warranty yet by taking it apart.

Audio measurements coming up next!

[bondo41]

I ordered 2 Magicjacks. I told them to ship fast. I did not get the e mail giving me the tracking number. I had to go to live chat 3 times before I was told when the magicjacks were shipped and giving me a tracking number.

I find that is not much different from getting information from other companies....I have had the same trouble with Walmart. Customer service is not what it use to be. In fact when I used the tracking number the USPO showed the package at the orgin and never changed.

As the old saying goes the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Back to the magicjack.....I put one on my apple computer and it worked like it should.....I even made some long distance calls. I pluged the other one on my computer with windows xp and I have yet to have a problem.

Time will tell.

I want to use one on my fax machine, but I maynot be able too.