Battery Answerphone?

[Mick F]

Thanks guys.

Our landline phone is for us both. It used to work for the whole family.
Yes, there's just the two of us now, but it's only four or five years ago that Daughter2 was living with us, so the landline phone served three of us.

One mobile number per person. Quids per month per person
One landline phone for a whole household plus free calls and the cost of broadband can less than two mobile phone charges.

I'll do some more research regarding cordless handsets and base units.

[bikes4two]

So Mick, a bit more on this:

• Just to clarify, the first phone outlet in the house (as in the one connected directly to the point where the BT wire comes in) is called the master socket and is where the ADSL Broadband service is split away from the telephony service (and is where you plug in the filter thingy so that the ADSL signal doesn't interfere with the telephony and where for best performance, is where you plug in the router.

• Any additional phone outlets in the house are called secondary sockets.

• So, assuming (?) that it is the master socket in your living room (and not the spare room where you have your router) into which the current telephone and answering machine are plugged into, do you
  
  (a) just want to relocate the telephone and answering machine to another room but leave the (master) socket where it is or
  (b) move the master socket as well?

[Mick F]

The master socket used to be at the front of the house where the wire comes in.
I re-routed the cable, and fitted the master socket in the back of the house by laying the wire through the loft.
The router is in the back (spare) bedroom.
The "old" master socket - which is a now a normal one - is in the livingroom where the landline phone is plugged into.
Everything works well, and has done for 20 years plus.

All I want to do, is do away with the mains socket that feeds the cordless phone and answerphone base unit, but leave the base unit in the livingroom, but without a power socket.

The "but without a power socket" is the issue here.

WiFi base unit?
Battery powered base unit?
Battery powered tell-tale to say we have a message?
Do these things exist?

[Jdsk]

All I want to do, is do away with the mains socket that feeds the cordless phone and answerphone base unit, but leave the base unit in the livingroom, but without a power socket.

The "but without a power socket" is the issue here.

WiFi base unit?
Battery powered base unit?
Battery powered tell-tale to say we have a message?
Do these things exist?

Any thoughts about the options in the first reply to your original post?

Thanks

Jonathan

[Mick F]

Nope.
None of your answer is right for us/me.

I've said what I want.
Cordless battery-powered answerphone base unit that doesn't need a mains input. Preferably WiFi to the phone socket so it doesn't need any physical connection.

Hows about a mobile phone locked to the landline number?

[thirdcrank]

Can you train the parrot to answer the phone?

I suppose the answer would be 'yes' but it might be poor at remembering messages.

[Mick F]

She's good at saying "Hello" but not having a conversation.

Latest photo of her a couple of days ago.
Fast asleep!

[Jdsk]

Many years ago I learnt not to spec technical stuff as I got what I asked for rather than what was needed!

I've already praised this observation.

And I suspect that this thread would have made more progress in its first three pages with a brief functional specification.

Jonathan

[Mick F]

Yawn.

[offroader]

Here's an idea. It seems too obvious so maybe I've missed something....

Move the extant base unit into the spare bedroom (I assume power is available as there's mention of a router there). Roam around the house with the cordless handset (hopefully the signal is good enough). Just bear in mind that periodically the handset and base unit must be reunited to charge the handset

[thirdcrank]

Yawn.

As you seem to be an electrician, why not do the homework first? Although your base unit plugs into the mains, I fancy it will have some sort of transformer (?) either in the flex or built into the unit and from the rating of that it should be possible to work out what's needed in the way of batteries.

Thinking about it, there's not much these days that cannot be run off batteries - "cordless" is increasingly the norm to avoid the limitations of leads. But that's because people are looking for mobility - escaping the limitations of the cord.

Maplins used to be the place where you could find anything to meet a specialised need but they are gone. There can't be many people who want the faff of trailing from one room to another with rechargeable batteries to power something that will stay in one place ie need not be mobile.

[Jdsk]

Yawn.

As you seem to be an electrician, why not do the homework first? Although your base unit plugs into the mains, I fancy it will have some sort of transformer (?) either in the flex or built into the unit and from the rating of that it should be possible to work out what's needed in the way of batteries.

Yes, as upthread:

What I want, is to move the base unit into another room where there is landline connection, but no mains socket nearby.
The present handset has rechargeable batteries (charged by the base unit) and the base unit where the answerphone system works from and is plugged into a mains socket.

Can you have a base unit battery-driven .......... obviously still plugged into a landline.

Yes, you can run anything that requires 240 V AC off a battery and inverter. It needs to supply enough current for whatever is plugged into it. If the base unit has an external transformer you could also use a battery and DC controller that matches the voltage and polarity of that power input and supplies enough current.

But it's an inelegant solution because it requires extra kit and wastes electricity and requires you to move the batteries and recharge them.

I'd much prefer to run a new mains spur or put it somewhere where there is already power.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

Move the extant base unit into the spare bedroom (I assume power is available as there's mention of a router there). Roam around the house with the cordless handset (hopefully the signal is good enough). Just bear in mind that periodically the handset and base unit must be reunited to charge the handset

IIUC by itself that wouldn't meet the requirement for a visual indication of messages on the handset or a portable tell-tale:

We are "rationalising" our livingroom, and as we don't use the landline much, we want to move it out of the way. The handset isn't an issue as it's portable, but the machine itself is "tied" to the phone socket and to a mains socket. If we move it out of the livingroom to somewhere else, we may not know there's a message. The router is plugged into a phone socket in the spare bedroom. The answerphone could be there too.

It struck me that there could be some sort of landline phone on an answerphone but with some sort of portable wireless battery powered tell-tale device that flashes(?) to say there's a message just as the base unit does now.

That way, the whole lot could be somewhere else, but the tell-tale would be sitting on the livingroom coffee table (for instance).

Jonathan

[Mick F]

Here's an idea. It seems too obvious so maybe I've missed something....

Move the extant base unit into the spare bedroom (I assume power is available as there's mention of a router there). Roam around the house with the cordless handset (hopefully the signal is good enough). Just bear in mind that periodically the handset and base unit must be reunited to charge the handset

Yes, that's simple and easy.
But .............. our handset, and the (three?) previous systems we've had over the years, only have a flashing light to say you have a message on the base unit itself.
Unless the base unit is in plain sight, you may not know there's an unread message.
Better idea is to have the flashing light on the handset.

Does that system exist?

[Psamathe]

Yawn.

Sorry if people spending their time trying to help you is boring you.

Ian