eircom phonewatch & upc

All the eircom phonewatch alarm uses is a very slow modem, it will work fine over a UPC line.

The only downside is that you would want to put some kind of UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) on the UPC modem and put it somewhere secure i.e. where it won't be plugged out.

Eircom installed phonewatch with their Plug n' Play ISDN box, which is basically an ISDN analogue terminal adapter, and really from the analogue line interface point of view, it's no different from a UPC router/ATA other than the digital technology is a bit different, but the way an analogue phone / alarm hooks up is exactly the same!

If you find where the eircom line originally came into your house i.e. small junction box (like a bar of soap size) or the back of the eircom master socket (you will need to remove the face plate + the rear plate and get back to the actual two lugs marked L1 / L2 where the incoming line's connected.

Just connect your UPC modem's line to an RJ11 socket + connect the Red and Green (centre two terminals) to L1/L2 on the back of the eircom socket instead of the incoming eircom line. Use a bit of CAT5 cable.
Job done!

A phone line is a phone line, the signals either gets converted to digital at the exchange in the case of eircom, or in the box in your house in the case of UPC... the alarm doesn't know the difference.

KoolKid wrote: »

A UPS will only work if the power cut is very localised.
If power is down in the area there is a good chance UPC will be down also.

There are battery back ups in all of their fibre cabinets and at their distribution amp cabinets in Cork anyway. I don't think a power cut would have any impact on them tbh.

There may well have been directly line-powered amps without battery back-up in the old pre-UPC cable TV systems before broadband/phone and fibre-to-kerb were rolled out.

The major risk would be that the router could be switched off or disabled locally. (The same applies to Eircom's ISDN Plug & Play box)

However, if someone is determined to get in, they could easily enough cut an external phone line too. None of them are fortified to that extent.

I can't really see a UPC line being any less reliable or secure, once you've a small ups on the router and a long as the incoming cabling is relatively secure.

For the most part, an alarm system in a normal house is designed to make a burglar's life difficult / attract attention and create a whole load of hassle and attention and call the monitoring centre if it goes off.

If you have really serious security needs, you would want to be looking at something well beyond a domestic burglar alarm i.e. you'd be talking about the kind of security that is required for banks / high risk individuals and then you'd need things like secured lines and all that stuff.

For the average normal, house, that's totally over the top.

The vast majority of break-ins are low-tech opportunism.

I think phonewatch just like to keep things simple, so insist on a regular PSTN line.

It's actually worth noting that removing the front cover (faceplate) of a modern, white-coloured eircom or Telecom branded master socket will result in the extension wiring in your house being disconnected.

There are at least three different designs of socket around:

1) Older type beige sockets, which may have TE or P&T branding. These have no demarkation switches, and are just simple sockets. However, they weren't really designed for DIY-friendly wiring, and require push-down tools to connect cables and could be wired in different ways depending on what the installer did back in the 1980s! In general, they are just normal RJ11 sockets.

2) Introduced in the 90s sometime, white coloured sockets with a plate at the lower part that is removable. These have a magnet in the back of the faceplate. When the plate is removed, it three micro-switches close isolating the extension wiring!
The idea of this, is that it allows someone to test the line, with the internal wiring disconnected by removing the faceplate and plugging a phone in.

3) The latest generation of sockets have a test socket behind the faceplate. The extension wiring is connected to the faceplate itself and if that is removed, the internal sockets in your house are disconnected from the line. The idea is that a phone can be plugged into the 'raw' line to test for problems.

NB: These also have a setup that is used by phone watch to allow for line siezure and DSL filtering.

So, to access the eircom incoming line you need to first remove the faceplate, then remove the two screws at either side behind the face plate (same as screws on a light switch / socket) and the eircom line is connected to two lugs on the very back of the socket itself.

The terminals used are:

L1 & L2 (Line 1) - This corresponds to the centre two pins on an RJ11 plug or the red and green wires. Usually connected to the blue pair on a modern structured cabling system.

R = Ringer circuit. This should be ignored as it's only used for backwards compatibility with certain old-fashioned rotary dial phones.

S1 & S2 (Line 2) - This is for terminating a second line. Do not use this unless you have a second line.
The modern eircom master socket can cope with two lines.

There are various terminals on the faceplate / DSL filter plate marked ALARM and ISDN.
These allow monitored alarms, or the ISDN plug n' play (HiSpeed) box to be looped through.

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Simple approach:

Leave ALL the master socket wiring exactly as is.
Get to the very back of the socket where the old (disconnected) eircom line terminated i.e. the thick wire coming in from outside or whatever it is.

Connect your UPC (or other) telephone service directly to these L1 and L2 lugs. - These correspond to the centre two pins on the phone cord coming out of your UPC box (red and green wire)

If you've older wiring, it may use little beige or brown junction boxes rather than master sockets. Try finding where the line comes in and connect the UPC phone line to here in place of the eircom line.

In general, I would strongly advise, particularly if there is a phone watch alarm involved, not to alter the wiring. They can be installed in various ways to allow for line seizure by the alarm and it's not always that obvious how it works, even though the circuit is actually very simple.

Also : MAKE SURE THAT THE EIRCOM LINE IS PHYSICALLY DISCONNECTED (AND SNIP THE WIRES LEAVING NO COPPER EXPOSED) - Eircom lines can present pretty high voltages i.e up to 90V 25Hz ringing signal, or various test voltages that could damage your UPC box should the two end up connected to the internal wiring simultaneously)