VOIP Skype system replacment....?

For those of you who may find building your own VOIP/Skype system a bit overwhelming.... I may have just the thing for you.

Ooma! is a nice little VOIP box that the company claims has a one time fee and your set for life. (unless your doing international calling)



I have not had a chance myself to review the box, but would jump at the chance if it came up.

There have been a lot of rave reviews on line, and heck; even Cali Lewis gave it a good review!

From what I can tell the international prices are just as good as Skypes. For me the price of calling family in Russia is the same as Skype.

As much as I would love to jump on the Ooma bandwagon, I just cant justify the cost at the moment. It would take me about five to six years to make my money back using Ooma. Thats not saying Ooma is bad, its just I pay about "$110 a year" for Skype with international calling, and a backup service if Skype should fail. To top that I would loose all my cool siptosis/Skype features.

If anyone out there is using Ooma, please drop me a line and let me know what you think. Maybe one day I will jump on the Ooma bandwagon.

Need More Power!

So a few posts ago I was writing about how I installed a light in my shed. Well this time I'm gonna tell you about what I did with the other two batteries from that post, and how I now have power in my shed.

So to start I basically did the same thing for the wiring, and a copper tie.

The big difference here is I had to connect the two batteries in series to get 24V. (Nice little document here) Why do I need 24V you ask....? So we can connect it to a Smart UPS 1500.

I have seen the Smart UPS 1500 on ebay between $45-$60 without the battery, and that's exactly how I want it seeing how I have my own.

Battery Set UP
So once again.... I cut some copper pipe to the length I needed, hammered the heck out of both ends, made 90 degree angles (on both ends), and drilled the ends of the pipe to connect to the battery terminals. Once this was all done, I used the tie (Notice it is one in this case) to connect one set of terminals on the batteries. One Positive (+) on one battery and one negative (-) on the other battery to connect them in series.

We want the battery in series so they need to be connected Positive, negative (+ -), Positive, negative (+ -).

So I placed the copper tie I made on one + of one battery and - to the other battery. On the other end I placed the copper of the romex directly to the battery terminal (White +, black -). The romex runs from the battery to a light switch.

Smart UPS Setup
I drilled a hole in the top of the UPS case to slip the romex wire in and connect it to the UPS. I had to cut the connector on the UPS and use wire nuts to secure the connection from the UPS to the romex. Once that was completed, I ran the romex to the light switch.



The light switch is wired the same way as in my previous post. The reasoning behind the switch is so I can kill all power going to the UPS system when not in use. (The UPS its self uses some power)

Now whenever I need Power, I just flip the switch and hold the power button in on the USP for about 5 seconds, and BAM!!! I have power.

Now the big downer with this system is two things.

1.) When you run the UPS to power something, it alarms. That is easily remedied with a pare of pliers by removing the alarm.
2.) Charging is a bit of a pain. Every time I go to charge the batteries I have to brake down the connections so I can charge each 12V battery separately.

In theory you can use the charger on the UPS to charge the batteries. From what I understand it wold take me days to charge these due to the size of the batteries.

So far I have used this system to run a small stereo in my shed. In theory I could also use it for more lighting if need be, or a small shop vac. I'm still in the process of deciding if I want to use all four batteries for this system and get one small 12V for my light. If I use all four for this system I would be able to increase my usage by quite a bit.

Perhaps one day I will get a solar charger, but that will be some other project to write about.

So has anyone else done something like this?