Grandstream HT802 possible to disable ring but still answer phone?

cinergi

Hello,

I have an HT802 ATA. Is it possible to disable the ring signal / voltage so the connected phone doesn’t ring, while still allowing it to be picked up to answer incoming calls? The phone has a very loud and unpleasant ringer that can’t be disabled, and I have a separate IP phone that rings to alert for incoming calls.

Thanks!

taraf

Pretty sure Grandstream lets you change the ring pattern, but I don’t think it’ll let you pick a 0-0 ring pattern (don’t ring at all). You might be better off replacing the connected phone, or cracking it open & doing something about the ringer internal to it. Guessing it’s some retro option like a model 500, to not have a volume control option for the ringer? My grandfather’s answer to that problem was to put a band-aid on the bell where the clacker hit it to attenuate the signal.

Thane_Bitter

There is no option, you could however alter the ring cadence but I don’t think it’s possible to not make it ring entirely.

cinergi

taraf Good guess, it is in fact a 500. And the ringer, even on the minimum setting, is loud enough to startle anyone standing near it. I can open it up and disconnect the ringer, but was hoping for an easily reversible software solution. Guess that’s not possible.

It’s funny, usually people post about getting these old phones to ring, whereas I have the opposite problem.

taraf

cinergi Good guess, it is in fact a 500. And the ringer, even on the minimum setting, is loud enough to startle anyone standing near it. I can open it up and disconnect the ringer, but was hoping for an easily reversible software solution. Guess that’s not possible.

One other option would be a diode on one of the two lines… but depending on how smart the ATA is it might stop working entirely. But the ring signal is 90V AC, but it detects that the phone is off hook by checking for a short and the actual voice circuit is DC. So in theory a diode to prevent AC from passing but allowing DC would kill the ringer without killing the phone.

cinergi

taraf Thanks, I will experiment.

Zotter

I experimented with the ring cadence of the HT802V2 (firmware 1.0.9.3). I found that the shortest practical ring is 175 because under that, the ATA often fails to transmit the caller ID to the phone. (If you don’t care about caller ID, you could set the ring to 25 ms.) The longest possible silence is 15824 ms (not quite the 16000 ms that Grandstream claims). So this minimalist System Ring Cadence…..

c=175/15824; [the semicolon at the end is mandatory]

…..would reduce the ring by about 90 percent and increase the silence by about 300 percent. This isn’t complete silence but it’s much better than the default cadence of 2000/4000.

The cadence setting is at SYSTEM SETTINGS > RINGTONE > SYSTEM RING CADENCE.

cinergi

Zotter Thank you! This works great with my Western Electric Model 500. No caller ID, so I set the ring time to 25ms. This is not long enough to activate the mechanical bell inside the phone, resulting in silence while still allowing me to pick up the phone (based on hearing the ringer from other phones).

Thane_Bitter

cinergi Western Electric Model 500.

On those types of phones that you can also go inside the phone and remove the wire that drives the coil from a rather mysterious wiring block (network block) but it requires disassembly to get access.

Often the problem people have is the other way around, they want it to ring but due to the coils and setting of the striker spring there is not enough current to allow the phone to ring. Most ATAs offer a boost to help, and the phone itself can be adjusted with lower tension on the striker spring.