Tel-Lynx Personal Telephone Assistant is compatible with Rotary Dial Telephones

[nVideon]

Hello Classic Rotary Phone fans! A brand new, feature rich, rotary phone compatible home phone system, the Tel-Lynx Connexion (TLC for short), is now for available for sale at www.tel-lynx.com. TLC combines seven different products into one well-integrated system. And it adds features never seen before. Check out www.tel-lynx.com/html/compare.php

TLC combines a mobile phone (Bluetooth) gateway, a robocall blocker with an interactive personal telephone assistant, speed dialer with an innovative dial-by-name capability that can be used from any telephone, multi-user voice messaging system, phone call recorder, two count down timers, and two alarms. The feature-rich TLC was specifically designed to be used with both touch-tone and rotary dial telephones. It can even translate rotary dialed digits into touch tones while on a call!

TLC incorporates an interactive personal telephone assistant that can screen calls and find out who's calling and which family member the call is for. It then rings your telephones with a distinctive ring for each family member. When you answer, TLC announces the call so you can decide if you want to take the call, send it to voice mail, or block the caller. And you can do this from any telephone in your home--even rotary dial telephones! TLC can be customized as to how it screens calls and for which callers it announces calls.

TLC blocks 100% of all robocalls, including political calls, and nearly all telemarketing calls. With TLC you only get the calls you want when you want them. It also has a scheduled and temporary do-not-disturb feature.

TLC supports single and two-line telephones so that two people can make or take two separate calls at the same time. It can support up to four phone services (two landline services and two mobile phones), depending on which model you select (See www.tel-lynx.com/html/buy.php for a comparison of Tel-Lynx models).

TLC was designed by Chris Hodges at nVideon, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia, and is assembled in a state-of-the-art electronics manufacturing facility here in the USA. Please check out www.tel-lynx.com for more information. If you have any questions or comments about TLC, please feel free to post them to this thread and I will respond as soon as I can.

Thank you,
Chris Hodges

[poplar1]

. The feature-rich TLC was specifically designed to be used with both touch-tone and rotary dial telephones. It can even translate rotary dialed digits into touch tones while on a call!

What are the tolerances for dial speed (pulses per second) and for make/break ratio?

[nVideon]

. The feature-rich TLC was specifically designed to be used with both touch-tone and rotary dial telephones. It can even translate rotary dialed digits into touch tones while on a call!

What are the tolerances for dial speed (pulses per second) and for make/break ratio?

Thanks for your question. The timings are fully programmable in the firmware and I could to add a way for the user to set them. Currently they are set in milliseconds as follows:
         33,   // breakMin
         100,   // breakMax
         17,   //makeMin
         75,   //makeMax
         150,   //interDigitMin
         200,   //flashMin
         900,   //flashMax

I am open to any feedback that you may have on this. Tel-Lynx is fully field upgradeable so enhancements can always be made.

[TelePlay]

From picking up the receiver and hearing the dial tone, will this device convert pulses from a rotary phone to DTMF to make the call?

[nVideon]

From picking up the receiver and hearing the dial tone, will this device convert pulses from a rotary phone to DTMF to make the call?

Tel-Lynx sits between your telephones and your telephone services. So the dial tone you hear when you pick up the telephone is coming from Tel-Lynx not from a telephone service. Tel-Lynx only converts pulse dialed digits to DTMF when you are on a call. It does this so you can navigate phone trees with a rotary dial telephone. There is even a way to generate DMTF '#' and '*' while on a call. Tel-Lynx interprets pulse dialed digits directly when you are dialing and using its menus (features). Tel-Lynx was not originally designed to use rotary dial telephones. That came later and it was a challenge. And I love challenges

Many Tel-Lynx features like dial-by-name use '*' and '#' to delineate user input. On a touch tone phone, to dial-by-name you pick up the phone and at the dial tone, dial a few letters of someone's first name then press '*'. Then dial a few letters of the second name, then '*', then dial the letter corresponding to the phone type H for home, M for mobile, W for work, B for business, F for fax or '*' for any phone type. Tel-Lynx then looks up the phone number and dials it for you. If there is more than one match, Tel-Lynx enumerates them and asks you to select the one you want to call.

The challenge was to figure how a rotary dial user could easily input something equivalent to the '#' and '*'. To solve this problem, Tel-Lynx assumes the first pulse dialed digit means you will be using a rotary dial telephone for the entire interaction (until the receiver is placed on the switch hook). Thereafter, any time the user flashes the switch hook once it interprets that as a '*'. If the switch hook is flashed twice quickly, it interprets that as a '#'. So, for example, to dial-by-name with a rotary dial phone you would dial the first few letters of the first name (remembering that 7 and 9 have the Q and Z letters) then flash the switch hook, then dial a few letters of the last name, then flash the switch hook, then dial the letter associated with phone type (or flash the switch hook for '*'). Bingo!

When in a Tel-Lynx menu when pulse dialing, you can also flash the switch hook once for '*' and double flash for '#'. It really works quite well.

[dsk]

Now we have definitely someone out here able to make out phones usable on more modern networks.  And I use this possibility to ask for more. A unit able to dial the number ordered by a manual telephone, or recognizing the sound of a rotary dial without sensing the electric pulses, just the sound.

It would be nice to just "ask the operator" and get the number, or let my rotary pax easily connect to voip adapter or cellphone.

I will absolutely consider the tel-lynx.

dsk

[nVideon]

Now we have definitely someone out here able to make out phones usable on more modern networks.  And I use this possibility to ask for more. A unit able to dial the number ordered by a manual telephone, or recognizing the sound of a rotary dial without sensing the electric pulses, just the sound.

It would be nice to just "ask the operator" and get the number, or let my rotary pax easily connect to voip adapter or cellphone.

I will absolutely consider the tel-lynx.

dsk

Tel-Lynx doesn't have voice recognition so it would be hard to implement an "ask the operator" feature with Tel-Lynx alone, but Tel-Lynx does make it easy to use rotary phones with VoIP adaptors and cell phones. With Tel-Lynx, you can use rotary dial phones to issue voice commands on Android phones and iPhones (Siri), but you still have to dial something to initiate that feature.

Currently, Tel-Lynx uses a single flash at the dial tone to enter its menu (command and control) system and a double flash to dial the last call (whether placed or received). It might be interesting to implement a triple flash that would start the voice commands on a cell phone. Is that the kind of thing you are thinking about?

[TelePlay]

Tel-Lynx sits between your telephones and your telephone services. So the dial tone you hear when you pick up the telephone is coming from Tel-Lynx not from a telephone service. Tel-Lynx only converts pulse dialed digits to DTMF when you are on a call. It does this so you can navigate phone trees with a rotary dial telephone.

So, how is the call "made" in the first place to get to the point of doing this on a rotary phone?  Using flash and double flash for * and # is great along with the device recognizing pulses so why can't a rotary phone be used to input a dialed number into the device and then some use of flash given to have the device open a line and dial out.

If it can't, is that a feature that could be built into this device to enhance its attraction to members?

[nVideon]

Tel-Lynx sits between your telephones and your telephone services. So the dial tone you hear when you pick up the telephone is coming from Tel-Lynx not from a telephone service. Tel-Lynx only converts pulse dialed digits to DTMF when you are on a call. It does this so you can navigate phone trees with a rotary dial telephone.

So, how is the call "made" in the first place to get to the point of doing this on a rotary phone?  Using flash and double flash for * and # is great along with the device recognizing pulses so why can't a rotary phone be used to input a dialed number into the device and then some use of flash given to have the device open a line and dial out.

If it can't, is that a feature that could be built into this device to enhance its attraction to members?

Perhaps I have not explained what Tel-Lynx does very well. Think if it like a mini PBX. Tel-Lynx sits between your telephones and your phone services. You attach your telephones (touch tone or rotary dial phones) to one of Tel-Lynx's two inside lines which look like phone company lines. And you attach Tel-Lynx's landline jack to your phone service. You can also pair Tel-Lynx with two mobile phones. These phones services constitute Tel-Lynx's outside lines.

When you take one of the attached telephones off-hook, Tel-Lynx provides you a dial tone. And you can dial as you normally would or you can use the dial-by-name procedure I outlined above in this thread. You can do this with a touch tone phone or a rotary dial phone. Remember that Tel-Lynx is interpreting your dialing at this point and no phone services are involved.

Once you have dialed a complete phone number or you have dialed by name, Tel-Lynx goes to work to places your call on one of the attached outside lines (phone services). By default, Tel-Lynx will look for an available POTS line first, then the mobile phones if the POTS line(s) is already in use. When it finds an available phone service it places the call on that phone service and connects the audio for the call through Tel-Lynx. However, your telephone is still physically attached to Tel-Lynx so Tel-Lynx is listening for any pulse dialed digits you might dial on your rotary dial telephone. If Tel-Lynx sees a dialed digit it generates a corresponding DTMF signal on the outside line. To send a DTMF '#' or '*', you flash the switch hook and dial 1 for '*' or '2' for '#'. It only does this pulse to DMTF translation when you are on a call.