WE302 Will not break dial tone

[G-Man]

My eyes must really be playing tricks on me. The pulsing contacts appear to be arranged in different positions in photos one and two. Photo one seems to be correct and photo two has the contacts reversed; either that or it's my eyes that are out of sequence.

[Phonesrfun]

To me it also looks confusing, but he has two photos, each with the finger wheel in different positions.  Photo1 which shows on my screen at the bottom is with the dial at rest, and Photo2 which displays at the top of my screen shows the dial with the finger wheel wound up, ready to release.  It is difficult to actually make out the tips of the springs, especially Photo2.  In comparing the stack and the metal and fiber spacers to a 5H dial I have, it appears to not be tampered with.  Photo2 does at first glance make it look like the two contacts have been reversed, but in Photo1, it is more clear that I think it is ok.  the wiring to the dial also seems to have proper wires in the proper place, although it is dark and hard to see the exact color of the wire connected to BB.  I still think the problem lies in the dial, however.  I wonder if he can get a better picture of the dial with better lighting.

[G-Man]

Here are close-ups of the pulsing contacts shown in the two photos.

[Phonesrfun]

Photo2 looks like an optical illusion where you look at it one way and it looks like one thing, then blink and it looks like something else.  It needs better lighting.

To jholland:  Did you take the switch off the dial when you cleaned the contacts?

[G-Man]

Photo2 looks like an optical illusion where you look at it one way and it looks like one thing, then blink and it looks like something else.  It needs better lighting.

To jholland:  Did you take the switch off the dial when you cleaned the contacts?

That's why I called upon your expertise;-)

From the current photos it's difficult to determine if the contacts have been modified.

[Phonesrfun]

That’s why I called upon your expertise;-)

From the current photos it’s difficult to determine if the contacts have been modified.

Yes, I agree.

[jholland]

Thanks for all your help!  I have enclosed some better pictures in hope that they will help troubleshoot the problem. 
I have included three pictures

1.  Dial at rest.  This is the resting state when the dial is released and at home
2. Dial at zero:  This is with me holding the dial fully dialed to zero
3.  Dail returning:  This is a picture of the dial returning from zero and held by me with the pulsing contact held open by the pawl

Hope these give you some ideas

thanks,
jeff

ps. I have never removed the dial or any other part from inside the phone, only changed wiring and adjusted ringer.  I did take out the transmitter and bend some contacts to get that working.

[Phonesrfun]

Jeff:

This is a puzzling thing.

The photos seem to show the dial switch all in order.

I guess one thing at a time to try.  Did you try to jiggle the hook switch to see if that breaks dial tone?  I suspect that it probably does, but try it and then we go on to the next step.  Take the yellow/brown wire off the Y terminal of the dial to see if that turns off the phone.  It should.

See what those two things do and come back and let us know.

[poplar1]

I'm not familiar with Vonage specs, but some VOIP lines don't tolerate much deviation from 10 pulses per second.

You said another pulse phone works fine on your Vonage line. Does the other phone have a rotary dial or a pushbutton dial that stores the number then pulses it out? If it is a rotary dial, you may want to compare its speed with that of the 5H dial on the 302. You can do this by releasing the 2 finger wheels at the same time. Otherwise, you can use the stopwatch function on a cell phone.

[jholland]

OK, here is the latest

1.  When i jiggle, but but don't fully press the hook, it breaks dial.  I can never get it to do it on the first jiggle, but often on the second.
2.  When I disconnect the yellow/brown wire off the Y/L2 terminal the phone dies, or at least looses the dial tone completely.  Don't know ow else to tell if it died.
3.  I tried timing the time the dial takes to return from a zero dial.  Its really hard to do, but best I can figure is that it takes about 1.25 seconds.  Not sure how good my reflexes are on trying to time it.   I don't have another dial phone to compare it to.  The only other phone I have is a electronic pulse dial
4.  When I dial any number, the dial tone does go away until the the dial returns to its home position, then it returns.

I don't understand how the pulse rate could cause the vonage device to not break dial tone. since when you dial the number 1 it only pulses 1 time, thus the vonage device couldn't know what the pulse rate would be.

I did get it to break dial once when I was dialing (#3), but I must have dialed a hundred more times after that and it would never repeat.   Could the contacts just be dirty?

I did check some things out with my volt meter.  Here is what I found with the voltmeter on the lines into the wall:

1.  With the phone on standby, I get 48.8 VDC
2.  When I pick up the handset this drops to 2.2 VDC
3.  As soon as I start dialing it drops to 0.0 VDC
4.  My voltmeter is not fast enough to exactly read it, but it appears the pulses are around 33-34 volts DC

The most interesting thing I found was by also repeating this on my modern pulse dial phone.  When I pick up the handset it drops to 7.0 VDC not 2.2VDC as this phone does.  Everything else appears to be the same.  Any reason why the voltage would be so different on these?

Thanks for any help

Jeff

[jholland]

I just thought of and ran another test.  What I did was lift the handset on the 302 and the also lifted the handset of my modern pulse dial phone that is on another jack and tired to dial from it.   With both the handsets lifted, I could not break dial from the other phone either.  In fact, it would not even do the electronic pulse of the numbers.  When I pressed a number, I would hear a single slight click and then nothing, no pulses.

This is leading me to believe the voltage must have something to do with it, that maybe the 302 drops the voltage too low and is therefore not signaling the voyage device correctly?

There must be some type of signal the phone sends to the voyage device telling it "Hello, get ready to receive pulses"  Could this be the 7 VDC current that tells it that and it does not recognize the 2V signal?

jeff

[Phonesrfun]

When the dial is off-normal, the switch in the dial mutes the receiver so yo don't hear loud clicks while the dial pulses.  This is normal.  In fact everything you describe is normal for a 302, including all the voltage measurements.  I am actually surprised you are getting 48 volts out of a Vonage router.  I was on Vonage once and went through 2 routers and both were 24 volts under no load.  A telephone central office runs at 48 volts, but I was under the impression that ATA routers normally all put out 24.  Perhaps I was mistaken.

Off hook, the 302 draws more current than a newer phone, and thus the lower voltage under a load.  Perhaps under load, the higher current draw is loading down not only the line voltage but the internal voltage in the ATA.  If you have a 200 0hm or so resistor, you might try that in series with the phone and see if that helps.

The fact that the voltage drops to zero when you turn the dial is an intentional design feature of the 302.  You might try disconnecting the red/slate wire from the R terminal of the dial to bypass this shorting action and see if that helps. 

The way your phone is currently, however, I see no problem with it, other than it may be somewhat incompatible with the Vonage router.

PS No rotary phone will dial when another phone is off-hook. 

[poplar1]

If you know someone who has a landline, you might try the 302 on that line. Central office lines should tolerate 8 pulses per second or more (1.25 seconds for 0). If it works there, you can then speed up the dial by  adjusting the governor.

[poplar1]

I don't understand how the pulse rate could cause the vonage device to not break dial tone. since when you dial the number 1 it only pulses 1 time, thus the vonage device couldn't know what the pulse rate would be.

2 different values. It is looking for 60 miliseconds between pulses of a given digit dialed, and a larger value for interdigit pause (the time between numbers, while you are winding up the dial for the next digit.) This is how it distinguishes a 2 (two pulses) and two 1s (two pulses). If a dial is too slow, it may see 7 as 1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

[jholland]

Thanks again for all your help! making this thing work has become a mission!

Disconnecting the wire didn't help, I will try to resister idea but will need to buy one.  I will also track down a neighbor with an POT service.

I still don't understand how the voyage device could not recognize the timing correctly.  If I just dial a 1 and only a 1, it should break dial, but since I have not dialed any other numbers there would be only a single pulse and thus no timing between pulses.

thanks,
jeff