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[CinemaDude]

I have been using the X10 Telephone Responder TRS-551 sucessfully with nary a problem for over a decade.  Call in, the ring warble voltage triggers the unit and a few beeps and touch tone key presses later and you've turn your A/C and/or lights and/or your stereo system, etc., ON or OFF; piece of cake, and VERY useful.  If you are by a telephone or carrying a cell phone anywhere on the planet, you can control stuff in your house.  Much more useful, in my opinion, than needing to be by a computer with internet to access your ActiveHome system.   Why they discontinued this teriffic product and are not offering a similar replacement is beyond me, and a really stupid corporate move. 

Anyway, recently I switched my home phone service to DSL and dropped the landline-based phone service.  The DSL dumps the internet connection to a Vonage router and out the back of that is a standard RJ11 phone jack into which you plug your standard telephone(s).  When a call comes in, a ring signal is sent to whatever is plugged into that jack.  The telephone rings appropriately.  The X10 unit does not respond to that signal.  WHY?

If the router can generated a normal ring voltage signal that causes any standard phone to ring, even the old big clunky mechanical bell types, why won't the X10 responder pick up when the ring signal is present?  Now, this may be a conincidence that it stopped about the same time I switched to Vonage, and I admit I haven't yet tested it on a landline phone, but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced trouble with the X10 Telephone Responder unit with DSL phone service?  Vonage, BTW were useless in coming up with an explanation.  So was X10 Tech Support for that matter.  Seems once they stop making something, they are not interested in supporting it.  But then to be fair, this has been out of their catalog for quite awhile. 

Thanks

Frank 

[dave w]

 

Anyway, recently I switched my home phone service to DSL and dropped the landline-based phone service. 

If the router can generated a normal ring voltage signal that causes any standard phone to ring, even the old big clunky mechanical bell types, why won't the X10 responder pick up when the ring signal is present? 
Frank 

Cinema
I'm confused... DSL is still landline based phone service, so you dropped you local phone service but kept DSL (?).
If you plug an old clapper phone into the router, does it ring?
(The vonage may not actually supply the POTS 90V ring voltage, but something less. The TRS-551 is old enough that it may really want to see a faily high ring voltage before coming off-hook).