How to use more than 5 home phones with magicjack!

magicman · Post by **magicman** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:27 pm

A little background:
This is a very simple hack, for newbies and the experienced tech...
I have 2 Dishnetwork boxes and 4 regular phones at home, and I wanted them ALL to work with my magicjack, problem is, after I connected the 4th phone, it would Ring Trip...

What is Ring Trip:
(that means when the phone rings, and the current draw is too much, magicjack would think the phone was picked up, once the ring current was taken off, magicjack would then think whoever picked up the phone hung up, so basically it would hangup on incoming callers instead of ringing the phone.)

Types of phones this hack works on:
Digital ONLY, NO phones with an Analog Ringer will WORK (old bell type ringer) this should not be a problem, since no one even sells those old ringer type phones anymore.

How to do the hack:
First disconnect your home phone wiring from the telephone company box, its very easy, there are 2 type of phone boxes, the newer ones are large and grey, just use a screwdriver to open the box, and there will be a little phone plug inside of it, unplug it, thats it! here is a pic http://carehart.org/images/telco_box.JPG
The older ones require you use some pliers, just disconnect the black drop wire coming into the house, here is a pic http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distoldlp.png

There are 2 ways to pull this hack off they are both very easy, the first way uses 1 resistor, a 150 ohm resistor placed in series of the magicjack, and your home phone line.
if the first way did not stop the ring tripping, then try the 2nd way... The 2nd way uses multiple resistors, just place a 150ohm resistor in series between each of your home phones, and the wall jack. Series means the resistor goes in between ONE of the 2 phone wires, it does not matter which. there are 2 standards for phone wiring, depending on how new your house is, the old color standard is Red / Green, and the new color standard is Blue / Blue-White. an example would be, you disconnect the red wire, and place the resistor between it.... (the --^^^^-- is the 150ohm resistor) here is a crappy pic...

1st method:
wall-------^^^^-------magic-
jack---------------------jack

2nd method: (do this to each home phone)
wall-------^^^^-------tele-
jack---------------------phone

More Tips!:
Turn the Ringers OFF on as many phones as you possibly can, the ringers current draw is the #1 cause of ring tripping, I hope this info helps everyone!

SpamBox · Post by **SpamBox** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:49 pm

Great tip!
I've been thinking about setting my whole house too - so do you just have MJ connected to a 24/7 running computer, than run a phone cord/cable from the MJ to the wall telephone jack?

magicman · Post by **magicman** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:53 pm

exactly, I've got it plugged into a cheap laptop which runs 24/7

kumar · Post by **kumar** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 8:31 pm

magicman wrote:exactly, I've got it plugged into a cheap laptop which runs 24/7

how cheap mite i ask? (in the market)

magicman · Post by **magicman** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 12:13 am

not my cheapest, but cheap, I bought it at best buy on sale for $350 or $400 I think, its a dual core pentium d 1.7 with 1 gig of memory. it was a killer deal at the time, but I do see similar deals pop up all the time.
Also about that hack... Resistor values are nominal, you can increase or decrease the resistance depending on your phone, but that value typically works the best.
I've got a speaker phone that draws its power from the phone line, that phone still likes to ring trip the magicjack, but i'll post a fix for those types of phones soon, it could also be my phone is a piece of junk, I bought that particular phone like 5 years ago, and I have had no problems thus far with any other phones.

I was going to make a phone line current amplifier which also would allow the ringing voltage to pass through, and boost the current coming from the magicjack, but I am really lazy, and the resistor hack it working pretty good. It would consist of a high ohm 1:1 isolation transformer, a comparator on the secondary size of transformer, and a nominal voltage source in series with the secondary side of the transformer, the comparator would be used to detect a voltage drop when a receiver was picked up, and trigger a relay on the primary side of the transformer which would have a resistor in parallel with the primary side, which would increase the current draw from the magicjack to trigger the 'off hook' condition. other components would also contribute, but that would be the basics of it. it could probably be done with just a couple transistors instead of a comparator, but we'll see, if I get bored Ill work on it.

vanillabox · Post by **vanillabox** » Mon May 19, 2008 7:36 am

I have done this at my house. I currently have 2 wireless phones and an old analog phone in the bedroom. The cordless have the digital ringers and the one in the bedroom has the ringer turned off. I have an old IBM Celeron 500 mhz running with WinXP SP3 in the garage and it serves it up nicely with TightVNC running for Monitor Free Administration. I imagine if somebody could get this running for linux then a whole new world of Small Linux installs on old computers would open up.

ice cold beer · Post by **ice cold beer** » Sat May 24, 2008 11:37 pm

vanillabox wrote:I imagine if somebody could get this running for linux then a whole new world of Small Linux installs on old computers would open up.

I know a bunch of linux guys foaming at the mouth for MagicJack to be usable with their os. It's just a matter of time.

Max ODrive · Post by **Max ODrive** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:25 pm

You can get PIII laptops on eBay for $100-150 if you catch it right..

semicharm · Post by **semicharm** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:32 am

You could probably get one cheaper, even free, if you're willing to take a junker with a broken screen and/or bad battery. You can always hookup a monitor to get it up and running. Then leave it on an ac adapter and stuff it out of the way.

MrUmunhum · Post by **MrUmunhum** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:23 pm

Max ODrive wrote:You can get PIII laptops on eBay for $100-150 if you catch it right..

I would use a EPIA SBC at $125 new.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/store/mot ... /EPIA_5000

bugmenot01 · Post by **bugmenot01** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 4:05 am

majicman, how do you connect 6 items to the MJ phone port? Do you connect the MJ phone port to your existing house phone wiring? How do you do that?

foolproof2k001 · Post by **foolproof2k001** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:50 pm

can you draw me or describe in detail what u built in order 4 me 2 build and test????

thanks

magicman wrote:not my cheapest, but cheap, I bought it at best buy on sale for $350 or $400 I think, its a dual core pentium d 1.7 with 1 gig of memory. it was a killer deal at the time, but I do see similar deals pop up all the time.
Also about that hack... Resistor values are nominal, you can increase or decrease the resistance depending on your phone, but that value typically works the best.
I've got a speaker phone that draws its power from the phone line, that phone still likes to ring trip the magicjack, but i'll post a fix for those types of phones soon, it could also be my phone is a piece of junk, I bought that particular phone like 5 years ago, and I have had no problems thus far with any other phones.

I was going to make a phone line current amplifier which also would allow the ringing voltage to pass through, and boost the current coming from the magicjack, but I am really lazy, and the resistor hack it working pretty good. It would consist of a high ohm 1:1 isolation transformer, a comparator on the secondary size of transformer, and a nominal voltage source in series with the secondary side of the transformer, the comparator would be used to detect a voltage drop when a receiver was picked up, and trigger a relay on the primary side of the transformer which would have a resistor in parallel with the primary side, which would increase the current draw from the magicjack to trigger the 'off hook' condition. other components would also contribute, but that would be the basics of it. it could probably be done with just a couple transistors instead of a comparator, but we'll see, if I get bored Ill work on it.