I am replacing an ancient Comdial PBX for a school, and need to interface with their Rauland Telecenter ICS intercom system.
The current method they use is:
dial 60 (no ring, sounds like the Rauland “answers” immediately)
then dial the feature code for the paging zone of the Rauland
I am using a Cisco SPA112 in order to provide the FXS port for this intercom. However, when I dial the extension I setup, it rings and rings without the Rauland ever picking up.
This is the first time I have had to interface with an intercom system like this. What am I missing? Do you have to change some settings on the extension? Does it act differently than what I am thinking?
Is there an auto answer setting I might have missed on the extension?
Am I at least thinking correctly that this intercom system just uses a “regular” extension and nothing special?
I understand that. I’m faced with making an old intercom system work with a new PBX without any documentation at all. That’s why I asked for any advice from those who might have used FreePBX to do this. Perhaps I missed something in the extension configuration.
At least now I know to look to the auto answer. Perhaps it responds to something other than a ring.
The paging system likely does not “respond” to anything. It is an input simply waiting for something to broadcast (voltage).
I don’t know this unit specifically, but I’ve dealt with various systems over the years.
You need to know what you are connecting to. How is it connected? Does it actually have a RJ11 phone jack? Is something hard wired and someone left a phone jack connected some place?
Why are you even assuming you need to supply dial tone to it?
Yes, it interfaces via a RJ11 phone jack that originally connected to one of the extension ports on the Comdial. Odd thing is, we can’t find “60” referenced anywhere in the Comdial config (which is difficult to interpret to begin with).
The instructions talk about either using the dedicated “dumb” phone that came with the intercom, or setting up a number on your PBX to dial to it. That’s as much as we have been able to find out from the Rauland manual.
Wait, you dial the extension? Did you setup a page group in FreePBX and dial that instead? You can even use “extension” 60 for the page group number to match things for the users.
So delete your FXS extension, set it up again on some other extension number.
Make page group 60 and add the FXS extension to the device list.
Though I know nothing about the Rauland, most devices of that type emulate an analog phone line, rather than a phone. To confirm this, connect an analog phone to the Rauland (with it disconnected from the PBX). If you hear a dial tone and can dial feature codes, you would need an FXO device (SPA3102, Obihai/Polycom OBi110 or OBi212, Grandstream HT503 or HT813). The FXS SPA112 would not work.
Alternatively, check how it was connected to the Comdial. If connected to a trunk/CO line port, rather than an extension/station port, you will need an FXO with FreePBX.
Conceivably, the Rauland has a configuration setting that would make it compatible with the SPA112.
I want to thank everyone’s help with this. We still could not figure it out, even when trying an FXO port. The school is looking into a simple SIP paging adapter that is compatible with FreePBX/PBXAct as a replacement.
I just got a catalogue in the mail about one from Viking or maybe Grainger. The technology is finally catching up on these, so find one that will meet your needs should be relatively simple.
Ah! I wondered if Crosstalk made a video about it! One of my favorite channels.
I am looking at just the adapter, so that I can use my existing amplifier for multiple speakers. Do you know if the adapter can handle multiple zones, or would you need separate adapters per zone?
I can’t make a recommendation one way or the other since I don’t know all of your requirements, but it seems like an excellent way to set this up without trying to cobble it together with a phone and matching transformers…
Check CyberData’s return policy to make sure if it ends being the wrong unit, you can upgrade or downgrade to the one you actually need.