I need a phone jack in a workshop to allow my burglar alarm to call out when required. The building is about 60' from the house and on a separate electric meter.
Is there a wireless phone jack with this kind of range? Nothing I see advertised mentions a range, but I get the idea they're very short range.
The obvious answer is to bury a cable, but there's a patio and other obstacles that make this very difficult.
thx . . . frank
yes its called a cell phone. for about $250 plus $12 per month extra on top of existing monitoring this can be done. Or run a wire.
The higher the frequency the phone uses, the greater the range and less interference (and more channels for same bandwidth). You want a 2.4Ghz cordless phone, don't even bother with 900Mhz as there is too much use in that band
THere are also phone line extenders that use the house AC wiring as the signal conductor. Plug into a wall outlet and phone and go.
60' is not too far to run a phone wire overhead or direct burial and it will not suffer from power outages. Run the wire alongside the AC (but not in the same conduit). Far cheaper and more reliable.
Uh- 'wireless' doesn't mean RF. Most piggy-back on the electric circuits, like the old wireless intercoms. They MAY work, if both service drops are off the same transformer can, but don't count on it. Is your phone service on the same poles or buried service path as your electric? Ma Bell can probably do another drop, bridged to the same number. Or is your shop meter daisy-chained through the house service somehow? Or if you don't wanna involve ma bell, find a reel of bury-rated phone cable. Unlike electric service, distance isn't really an issue, so you can take a roundabout route that doesn't mess up your patio and such. A flat shovel and a slit in the turf, shove in and tamp down. Make sure you also put a phone out there, and check for dial tone and make a call once in a while to verify cable is still good.
aem sends...
did you know you can drill underground? if your drilling in topsoil its pretty easy, this would minimize digging although you can use outdoor direct burial cable and just a straight blade shovel to open a V, insert cable then push sod back with shoe.
you must remember the cable is shallow and avoid cutting it, but its quick and easy, so easy that going around obstructions isnt a big issue
Isn't this the frequency that interferes with wireless routers?
Right. If the patio is in the way, go around it, even if it is twice as far.
amej. said
Heck, he'll probably end up using the phone as a phone far more often then he has a burglar.
One other possiblity. Does your house have an alarm?
Google the wireless control companies for entry gates and you should be able to find a company that can provide a long-range, battery operated contact closure over an RF link. The really good ones have external transmit and receive antennas.
That way you can set it to ring a buzzer in your house when your home if someone enters the garge or set off a loud alarm in the house if you are away.
Beachcomber
There is no truth in this statement. Frequency does not equal range and certainly does not equate to interference. There are lots of other considerations.
900MHz is just old technologically. So there are not really any newer phones being developed for it. There is no inherent flaw in 900MHz. 2.4GHz is nicer because it has newer technology. Its more recent. 5Ghz is even better typically because the technology tends to be newer and digital. It may even be mandated that 5GHz is reserved to digital, im not sure.But its the quality of the product that makes the most difference. And the interference from other similar products in your neighborhood. Not as much the frequency.
Another important consideration is that the newer higher quality digital phones tend to have security features on them. Thus, the two ends of the unit needs to be synched. I'm not sure how you will know that your phone is in synch with its base without going out there daily to check.
I wasn't sure if it actually uses the AC wiring or just plugs into the wall to power RAF. There's really no commonality in the wiring unless we go back to the transformer.
mm, I bet you're right. I use a cell phone out there now, but I forget to take it with me -- often. I just didn't run a phone to it when I built the building because of the difficulty of burying the wire.
Pipedown, there is no AC between the house and the building. We have two power meters. One was for a mobil home my mother lived in prior to her death, and we kept the service when we pulled the mobil home out. There's now a greenhouse and shop on that meter by themselves.
I'm obviously trying to get this done as economically as possible. Overhead might be doable. I could probably hang it from the corner of the house to the corner of the shop. I just really didn't want another wire hanging across the yard.
I appreciate all the comments. I guess I'll rule out the inexpensive wireless jacks.
Not really. Why would you think there's any connection between frequency and range?
[snip]
Actually that was an oversimplification. While in general (for signals with the same energy) range will typically fall off with frequency ( though there are exceptions depending on where you look in the EM spectrum) the newer phones have higher frequency and longer range.
They can do this by using a better signal (digital) and by taking advantage of better electronics and newer ideas about signal transmission and data retention.
While the statement snipped and taken out of context is untrue WRT all signals, it does hold true for the cordless phones which was the topic of the thread and my reply. One can safely assume that if you go to the store and select a higher frequency phone over a lower one, the performance will be better. (I did find dissenting comments while googling but that website was bias as it was selling older technology and the article was anti-marketing)
Higher frequency allows you to have a narrower channel which can hold more information. More channels means they can have more seperation between which equals less interference. Digital signals have inherent advantages over analog WRT noise immunity. Code hopping and spread spectrum add even more noise immunity by allowing the radios to instantly change channels without you interacting. and more.
On the other hand, Higher frequencies would definately have more difficulty penetrating watery obstructions like trees, leaves and people but would have good line of sight performance. The other digital based noise control strategies take up the rest of the slack for the time being.
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