RE: Multiple telephone lines & Comfort system

[graham@xxxxxxx]

I have ISDN2e, Comfort and Homevision, so my set up is simialr to yours,
however I have no standard BT line at all (we have mobile phones to use if
there is a power cut). Comfort can not handle multiple lines, nor can it
handle ISDN direct, so you have to have a PBX or TA or something that can
convert from ISDN to POTS. My setup is as follows:

ISDN2e comes in to the house to the BT 'box' (I think this is called an NT
but Keith or someone will no doubt correct me).

There are two ports on the BT box, one is connected to a Terminal Adapter,
the other to a Router.

The router (Zyxel Prestige 202) has two analogue ports on it, but I don't
use them because I have three numbers through MSN (multi subscriber
numbering) on the ISDN service.

The router handles network traffic for the LAN and as a bonus distributes
CAPI information around the network, this allows me to have CAPI software
(e.g. caller ID) running on networked machines.

The terminal adapter (Speeddragon) is no longer used for data at all as
router (a more recent purchase) handles all that.

The terminal adapter does have PBX and 3 analogue ports built in, so these
are assigned to Home, Business and Fax.

The fax port has an analogue modem attached to it which is in turn attached
to my server for faxes in and out. I could use software only fax across the
CAPI but it is very resource hungry and I had the modem anyway.

The business phone port connects to a Krone block where it is split into 5
CAT5 leads. These can be patched through to any 5 ports in the house
through the patch pannel (smug Graham awaits his pat on the back from Keith
for using true structured wiring ;-).

The home phone port connects to the incoming phone connector on comfort.
The outgoing phone connection on comfort connects to another Krone block
where it too is split into 5 CAT5 leads for patching through.

Comfort is the answer phone for home calls, with mail boxes set up for
Graham and Orla. Of course I can also dial into the home number and
interact with Comfort. Also Comfort has access to the phone for calling me
with problems or door phone users when the alarm is armed.

The answer phone for business calls is actually a piece of CAPI software
running on the server (no direct connection to the router or the terminal
adapter) called Capitel. It records caller ID information on multiple
machines but on the server it also takes messages and can interpret DTMF
tones. This means that I can dial into the business number to retrieve
business messages or to trigger programs to run. For example I can call in
to the business line and trigger my server to open a web page on the server
located at my ISP. This web page captures the visitors IP address. I can
then hang up the phone and browse to another page on the ISP located server
where I can view the last connected IP address. This allows me to force my
router to connect out and then allows me to pick up it's current dynamic IP
address so that I can then connect to home, all without using permanent
connections, static addresses or dns services.

Finally I could say the Homevision is irrelevant in this scenario, but
there are a couple of points worth making. First off, Homevision can not
get caller ID or even detect that a call is coming in with ISDN (unless
someone knows better). However my caller ID software (Capitel) creates a
log file with all caller ID information in it. So I put together a custom
video screen in Homevision that displays the contents of a text file. I
also wrote a little batch program that picks up the Capitel CID log file,
places it in the Homevision directory and overwrites the original. I then
attached the video screen and the batch program to a macro and attached the
macro to an IR code (along with commands to pause the video or dvd, switch
the channel etc etc). I also have the video from Homevision piped around
the house through a mosulator. Now when the phone rings I can press a
button on the remote (Pronto) if I want to know who's calling and the video
source will be paused, the channel will change, the HV screen will be
displayed containing the CID information and the CID log used by Capitel
will be cleared ready for the next call. I also have another button/macro
combination that reverses this to switch the channel back and restart the
original video source (I have simplified this a little as there are
separate macros to be run depending on which video source I am currently
watching and whether I am sitting in front of the projection screen or a
normal TV).

I hope this is useful to you, feel free to ask for further information.

Graham