Use your cell phone through your home phone wiring with bluetooth

Step 6 Miller Time

Here's some pics of my setup. As you have seen I have a pre-paid phone set up as line #3, really just for emergencies. When I get home from work each day and in range of the Xlink my regular cell automatically connects to it. I usually take off my phone and put it in the little charging stand for the rest of the day. This sits about 20' from the Xlink with a few walls between them. This is about as far as you want your cell phone to get if you intend on using the Xlink a lot.. at this distance the bluetooth link gets a little static-y (compounded by the fact I have poor cell coverage at home). My phone can actually maintain the connection to the Xlink for much further, but calls get very noisy at about 40' and the Xlink disconnects at about 50'. Like I said, bluetooth is short range, so plan accordingly.

My house has three hardline jacks currently, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, and one in my office. I don't yet use the office line but I will in the future. It's really nice to have a handset next to the bed, so that when assh^HH people call me at 1:30am I can pick up the handset and yell at them without having to get out of bed and go to the dresser for my cell.

I hope I've explained all this well enough. I've tried to explain how all this works to people before but they can't seem to wrap their head around it. Feel free to ask questions.

Comments

[elias.alberto]

I've had something they called ISDN a looooong time ago, some sort of a dual line which I could connect using both lines simultaneously and have a mind-blowind speed of 128kbps (did I say it was a loooong time ago? My isdn modem used a ISA socket). Well, this now-crappy isdn thing used a pair of conductive wires (just like regular phone does) but used a 8-pin RJ45 connector. I came to the conclusion this was just to force customers to not use regular RJ11 cables, instead buying these cables from them at whatever price they decide. I believe they called these cables RJ12.

[mrmucox]

Just as a warning, plugging an RJ-11 cord into an RJ-45 Jack, can cause damage to the RJ-45. If it's only ever going to be a phone jack, it's no problem, but it can permanently bend some of the connectors in the jack. We had a rash of new data jacks test bad in a new installation before we realized the tone generator we were using had an RJ-11 and it was ruining the data jacks.

[AF-Geek]

@mrmucox: Thanks to both you and @kP! While this is a cool instructable, I will probably never use it. But, your tip about the RJ-11/RJ-45 problem is a great nugget of knowledge!

[kP]

I was about to enter the same comment when I found this one - AGREED: plugging RJ11 into RJ45, while electrically possible, is mechanically not recommended - the pins of the jack will be compressed beyond recovery.

There are these cords: RJ45 male on one end (for the jack) and RJ11 male on the other (for the device):
http://techstore.doit.wisc.edu/product.asp?login=P&itemnum=C17154

[b2gills]

You could just get an RJ45 connector and crimp it on instead of the existing RJ11.