Obihai Technology OBi212 Universal Voice Adapter with FXS Phone and FXO Gateway Ports Support for Google Voice and SIP

IT TOOK ME 5 HRS TO SET UP. I ACTUALLY GOT THE DEVICE TO WORK WITH GOOGLE VOICE ON MARCH 10/2024 IN CONFLICT WITH THE END OF LIFE STATEMENT FOR 12/18/23 BY THE ObiTalk company. ObiTalk seems to be saying that after 12/18/23 these units will no longer get SERVICE from ObiTalk. ObiTalk does not sell units but Amazon IS. Keep in mind this unit is NOT PLUG AND PLAY AND there is no technical support after 12/18/23 from ObiTalk. If you buy the unit you are ON YOU OWN to get it to work. I had to look up alot of research on the web to finaly understand how to get the device to work and I want to share my experience with the amazon community.. The instructions just give you the proceedure for the wire connections only but that is half the battle. 1. Setup your google voice account first with call screening set to off initially. 2. Open browser and make sure during the setup process pop ups are not blocked and malwarebytes is temporarily turned off. Do this only until the device is set up. Redirects should be alowwed also. Ad blocker also temporarily off. 3. The 202 device has its own GUI internally. You may not have to do this but; Normally when you first get the unit if you log into the IP address of the unit which you get by dialing ***1 and you get the address you will get a URL not found error on the browser due to the fact that the units WAN is in disabled mode. To enable dial ***0 then 30# press 1 to enter a new value, press 1# to Enable the WAN port followed by 1 to save this setting. 3. You go to a website called ObiTalk.com and settup an account. You go to ADD a NEW Device and check use with google voice box. Dial ***5 followed by the four digit code you will see on the screen. ObiTalk will say new device registered and you need to see it when you go to the Dashboard. If you see a yellow triangle saying update needed you will need to update the firmware. I had to do it twice before the update worked. (MY router may have problems). In any case I tried to get the unit to work without the firmware update and was never able to succeed so I think the upgrade maybe is necessary. Some people say you should not upgrade as it will brick the unit and the unit will no longer work. NOT TRUE. During upgrade the power led flashes red. It takes 5 minutes. Like I said before I had to try to do it twice before on the obiTalk Dashboard I saw the unit with a STATUS green dot and near the settup gear the yellow triange was no longer present indicating the unit firmware was upgraded. Now the obi 202 was registered on the obiTalk website server. On the left find APProved Service Providers select FOR Home and Google Voice will appear at the top of the list. Select the Setup NOW button. You have to ACCEPT some stuff and then you come to a screen with SP1 and as I have one phone connected to Phone 1, I selected INBOUNd and OUTBOUND calls for phone 1 and deselected all Phone 2 options. Then you select Finish setup which takes you to a Google Voice web page where you should make sure your already logged in to you Google Voice Account. There are several prompts until it says to select your google voice account name which is just the full Gmail account name. Select it and confirm it and finish. 4. Go back to the ObiTalk Dashboard where you will see buy SP1 STATUS Connecting. Various Status messages may appear like REGISTRATION not Required or Connecting error and other stuff under STATUS. What you must see under Status is CONNECTED. 5. Now I went into the Obi202 GUI webpage and and went to System Status and scrolled down to SP1 where under status it says CONNECTED. If you see an IP address and TOKEN ERROR the whole process has not worked. I had to repeat all these steps 5 times before the process would work. Most of the time I got TOKEN ERROR. On the internet there are people who claim that Google is no longer giving out the special TOKEN needed to be sent back to the Obi202 unit for the unit to work. That is why they say not to reset the unit or do a firmware upgrade as this erases the TOKEN inside the unit and then after12/18/23 these units will not work with Google voice as you can no longer get the token. Well NOT TRUE. After 5 tries I finally got the Special Token sent by google voice back to my obi202 unit. So google is still sending out the token that you need. 6. To conclude when on the obi202 gui webpage I had to finish with a reboot and ended up with a orange checkmark at the top of the page and it says Config Current. Then I just closed the tab on my browser as I could not find a LOGOUT function. 7 I went to Google voice and under MY Devices I found the OBi 202 with the OBi Product Number listed. I enabled the device and IT WORKS FINALY. I give this unit 5 stars because it does work with google voice after12/18/23. Just no TECH SUPPORT. 1. Some people say ObiTalk will not allow the unit to be registered on there site. Mine registered fine. 2. Some people say Google Voice no longer gives out the Special Token needed after12/18/23. I finnally got the TOKEN after 5 tries and got connected to Google Voice. 3. Maybe I had a hard time due to network issues on my Home Internet but my network works fine as far as I can tell but I may have connectivity issues I am not aware of. Sorry I did not get a Obi212 unit as specified but the price was right and I do not need a PHONE LINE output anyway so I am still happy and will keep this unit. If ObiTalk shuts down its servers or Google will not allow SIP service on the Obi202 and other 2xx units well then I have a brick. Thats the risk. However there are alot of units that have been sold already and Amazon is still selling quantities . My unit was a NEW unit in a NEW Box. I'll accept the risk. The cost of this unit is just the obi202 unit cost. Google voice is free and ObiTalk is not charging me anything. Other SIP providers have a monthly charge or local and state taxes charge plus the cost of the unit.

I needed Google Voice to operate over a hard wire connection and this box solved all my problems. My voice was clear on the cordless phone and I had no issues. When on the cell phone, my voice can be jittery. I'm very conservative and only run on things that are free, like WiFi, which explains why this is a good investment for me. Easy to set up.

I'm a little disappointed, but thankfully I got mine before they jumped in price. I was rather hoping at least receiving calls would work, but the setup seemed simple enough- I'm surprised that Polycom hasn't: -Corrected the product listing -done more than just changed the logo on top of the unit as part of the acquisition- all the website stuff is still on obitalk.com... been a while since they updated anything, too.. Maybe that's part of their sunsetting, and they're just discontinuing service on the obitalk network eventually? I can't speak to its use with faxing, SIP or configurability as a gateway, because I haven't really dug into how that will work for services other than GVoice, but I'll keep tinkering, because there's a lot of options that it can be used for.

We use this to supply a voice line to our home's POTS wiring. It is not a simple-plug-and-play setup, but there are a lot of forums out there that can talk anyone through the process. After paying Ma Bell money each month thinking our POTS would stay working during storm outages, we learned this was not the case. Somewhere out in the field of copper wires they transitioned to a powered junction box that lost power during severe storm outages. So switching to this box means we still lose phone service during a power outage, but at least in this case we're not paying for what we thought was the security of always working POTS. To set up the device we needed the box itself, disconnecting the POTS wire at the Ma Bell box outside the home, an open phone jack in the home (garage worked fine), a steady internet connection, and a Google Voice account. With all these we were able to follow various forum instructions to first port our POTS number over to Google Voice for a one-time fee, then went to the obitalk.com website and with the device plugged into our ethernet stepped through the Google Voice setup. Caveats, we added the Wifi dongle to place the box in an out of the way spot near a POTS jack, but you could add a POTS jack near your modem/router if you didn't want to be on wifi. Also a power outage can knock the signal akimbo and you should check to make sure the line is working again after power is restored. It might require power-cycling the Obihai after power is restored. Bottom line, if your Ma Bell POTS service can't guarantee service during a power outage, might as well stop paying them and switch to this device synchronized with a Google Voice account. They're free and still work fine with Obitalk.

This Obi212 box is the real replacement for the obsoleted 110 having both a phone port and a line port (for another telephone service provider even VoIP based or just POTS). As a router as well I assume it will be like the OBi 202 for VoIP prioritization. I have not needed nor tried that having a dedicated subnet for all my VoIP with failover to two WANs / ISPs. What I do need is to combine and pass along another telephone provider (also VoIP based) into this unit and then on to my cordless phones. The 110 did this well. And while now out-of-support there are troubles everytime google adjusts anythng with the google voice service or renews their SSL certificates etc. I needed something newer so I tried the Obi200 with the USB OBiLINE device. The 200 itself works well with 4 providers to one phone line but using the OBiLINE attachment gave very scrathy and poor quality no matter how I tweaked it. I didn't have ringing/echo so impendance wasn't the issue. I adjusted all I could with many resets to defaults. But dropping this 212 unit in fixed all the quality issues and I am back to what ai had with the 110 unit - supported and updated (until the 2xx goes away?). This OBi212 was rumored to exist for a year but I never could find it available until a few days ago here at Amazon as "in stock soon". I am glad I got one. Obi should never have dropped the 110 until this 212 unit was in full production and available. I opened a ticket with Obihai to return the useless OBiLINE. I will keep my OBi200s as spares or for travel usage I guess.

If you are looking for a gateway to use google voice and NOT use a regular phone line (POTS), then this will work for you - it is capable of 4 Google Voice/SIP trunks connected to two telephone outputs (FXS). I have one of these and have been using it for years and love it. HOWEVER, if you are looking to use BOTH GoogleVoice/SIP lines with a home telephone line (POTS), this will not work. This is advertised as an Obi212, which has the 4 GoogleVoice/SIP trunks, one telephone port (FXS) and one telephone line (FXO), so your telephone can use both GoogleVoice/SIP or your existing phone line. For us, we have a Google Voice phone line that we have had for years and want it to ring our home phone and also be able to make calls with GV and our home phone line. With the Obi212 you can do this - not the 202. So again, if you are lo0oking to ditch your wireline home telephone and use GoogleVoice or a SIP provider, this is great for you. If you need to connect your POTS line to this thinking it has an FXS and FXO on it, you will be disappointed.

Purchased and got it to work with Google Voice on 4/11/24. I bought it and wasn’t sure if the end of life would fair but figure to give it a try and success! Don’t care that I got a different model but five stars bc it works!

Using this device with my Google Voice number allows me to have free home telephone service. This was the perfect solution for my needs since cell service in my house is poor in several rooms and VOIP services like Ooma & Vonage charge monthly fees for services that Google provides for free. The instructions were clear allowing the device to be quickly setup.