FritzFonApp stopped working

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello! I have mt6000 with openwrt 25.12.2 behind Fritzbox fiber 5530.

I have

kmod-nf-nathelper-extra installed, did

/etc/init.d/firewall restart

cat << EOF >> /etc/sysctl.conf
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_helper=1

as I always do when I set up a new router or do firmware update. Fritzfon App on my android had been working fine, till about 5 days ago. Now it says "Telephony via Fritzbox active", but when I dial, "calling via fritzbox..... " shows up, but no dial tone or ringing tone. It doesn't show up on the call-log on fritzbox either.

But strangely, it's not everywhere that it doesn't work. I have various access points on mt6000: On TP-Link RE205, Unifi AP, and directly wifi on mt6000 itself, it didn't work. However, on TP link WA850RE, it works (and of course, wifi on fritzbox directly). All these access points are connected to mt6000 through powerline TL-PA7017P, each over different connection, and set to access point mode, DHCP disabled.

If config of openwrt was at fault, I don't understand why it worked on WA850RE, if TL-PA7017P was causing it, why it didn't work on mt6000 directly. (mt6000 is connected to fritzbox over ethernet cable, sitting next to each other) And it's been working on these access points (I don't know about wifi on mt6000, since I activated it only recently)

I am totally mystified by this. I would appreciate very much, if someone could tell me what's going on.

2

How is your MT6000 configured? Since you seem to be using the WiFi on the Fritz!Box, NAT can/should be disabled on the MT6000 (i.e. AP mode). If that's not the case, what's the point in having the MT6000 if you use the Fritz' WiFi? Or was that for testing only? Please clarify.

That said, even when doing NAT, the SIP NAT helper often does more harm than good. For quite some time now, SIP often "just works". Try removing the kmod-nf-nathelper-extra package and reboot afterwards.

What do you mean by this?

3

@andyboeh Thank you for your advice! I uninstalled nathelper and set for a reboot at 3am. I will see how it looks like tomorrow.

Both mt6000 and fritzbox are in the basement, where I visit only to check things out. I use wifi on those only for testing purpose (except for water detectors etc for the basement), on fritz, it's usually off. My usual wifi is over access points. mt6000 has various VLANs, like default lan, guests, IoT. The access points I am talking about is connected to default LAN.

From mt6000, two Ethernet cables go out to go to different floors. One is connected to powerline, then another power line to WA850RE. The other ethernet cable on the other floor is connected to a dump switch, from there, two exits: one into powerline, then powerline to Unifi. The other exit goes to yet another floor, there is powerline, then powerline to RE205. So these are three disjoint topologies in terms of powerline-network. That's what I meant by "different connection". They are all TL-PA2017P, though.

4

I uninstalled kmod-nf-nathelper-extra yesterday, rebooted the router at 3am, now I checked. Indeed, now Fritzfonapp is working! Thank you so much!! I note good tips and make a "to do list" for setting up of a router. Now I see, a piece of advice is not valid in eternity.... it was copied from a post in December 2021. I guess inconsistency in working/not working was simply instability, and had nothing to do with each device.

5

I'm glad it's working now!

Yes, things change. And in the case of SIP, it has improved a lot. What makes it often even more stable is using TCP for signalling (instead of UDP) and UDP only for the RTP packets. I don't know if you can adjust that in the Fritz! app.

6

@andyboeh Thank you very much for the additional info ! Fritzfon app doesn't have any config possibility like this "using TCP for signalling (instead of UDP) and UDP only for the RTP packets". If I have issues again, I will try to use linphone: it has all kind of complicated config-possibilities, surely it's possible, if I study it well. Someone I know uses it, and he said it's better than Fritzfon app (though he himself doesn't know anything: his brother does everything for him.)
Or if you could suggest me an app with that config possibility which can replace fritzfon app, I would appreciate it!

7

The last time I used the Fritz!Fon app was back in the ISDN days - probably a decade ago. Nowadays I use Linphone, it's working well in my setup (connected over Wireguard to a FreePBX/Asterisk server; I use it only for the door bell).

8

Thanks a lot for your info! Now, it's a bit off the topic, but your "door bell" solution is interesting for me, because I might have to do something for door bell as well in near future. Do you have some kind of smartphone with linphone at the door, so that when someone comes and push the button, it will call you using linphone? My door is within the range of wifi, so that would work for me, too.

9

There are a few off-the-shelf video doorbells that support SIP (AFAICT the most popular ones are Hikvision and Dahua). I went for the Hikvision DS-KD8003 as door station and we also have the corresponding indoor stations. I configured them all for standard SIP so that not only the indoor stations ring but also the linphone. The door station does not support WiFi. Feel free to drop me a PM if you are interested in more details.

10

Thank you! I will study them a bit.

11

I'd actually suggest against video doorbells here, in my -limited- experience reliability (of reaching through to the phone, phones like to deep-sleep and freeze/ kill 'unnecessary' apps hogging battery power, including SIP clients) and latency are just too bad (to an extent making it unusable). IMHO a better approach is keeping the classic -dumb- doorbell as-is, catching the bell signal with an appropriate sensor (depending on your bell that might range from putting a reed contact to a zigbee water sensor to get the magnetic signal from the coils to directly attaching an optocoupler to the bell line, bonus points for adding a few zigbee sirens throughout the house - it's getting more complex with intercom setups…) and then using a real ONVIF capable PoE camera for the video part).

12

@slh Thank you for your suggestion! Actually I don't need video at all. I have something called SSiedle (?) intercom, but I would like to make it so that the doorbell also calls a phone number in the near future. I don't want sirens;; I have never heard of optocoupler.... I will check if it can help.

13

I agree with the soft-client problems on the phone - I would never use that without the indoor station. The outdoor station is installed for five years now and we had one crash of the outdoor station in this time period. The soft client is just a bonus feature when I'm not home.

I integreated that with ESPHome, Home Assistant and Asterisk/FreePBX: When the button is pressed, an automation in Home Assistant is triggered (via ESP32 and ESPHome) that initiates a SIP call via the Home Assistant Asterisk integration. I use that to ring the SIP indoor stations from an additional door without an outdoor station (no audio and video, of course).

14

Siedle makes the combination more complex, because it's no longer a simple bell signal, but a more complex protocol to tap into.

Don't waste your time, you need a more complex setup to hook into an intercom system (and in a bigger apartment complex, there's always a lingering question what you are allowed to mess with).

Just to explain the topic about optocouplers and stuff, this only applies to classic bell systems (not intercoms), consisting of transformer, button and some kind of ringer.

In such a simple bell system, what do you need - some way to fetch the ringer signal - meaning the bell/ gong (which might be fed either by 6-24 V AC XOR even mains voltage (230 or 110 V AC) to ring. There are multiple approaches how you can fetch this signal and feed it into the GPIO of some kind of MCU to digitize the bell signal into something $software understands, this could be done with e.g. (non-exhaustive list):

  • relais
  • optocoupler
  • reed contact on the bell/ gong coils
  • hall sensor on the bell/ gong coils
  • some accoustic sensor (e.g. clap switch like)

Every environment is different and has different requirements, e.g. I have:

  • a classic low-voltage gong fed with 8 V AC
  • I can not reasonably tap into the button circuit (cables behind the walls/ in the ceiling)
  • where the gong is placed, I can't reasonably get power (mains outlets too far away, don't want to drill through the walls and route new power cables above the plaster; just the 8 V AC ringing time while the button is pressed isn't reliable enough to power an MCU, send the signal, yada, yada)
  • an esp8266/ esp8285 or esp32/ esp32-c3/ esp32c6, etc. is not low-power enough to run on batteries long term

So my solution to this problem is a bit (too?) convoluted:

  • simple/ sensitive reed contact glued to the electro-mechanical gong's coil, (electro-)magnetically coupled
  • a zigbee 'water sensor' used as dry-contact to fetch the ringing from the reed contact and fire off an 'alarm' to my home-assistant/ zha instance
    this water sensor is now running of a single cr2032 battery for over a year and the battery is still nearly full
  • a home-assistant automation now fires off this alarm to 2 zigbee sirens (configured for a simple gong sound, not a real siren sound)
  • if I wanted/ needed, I could combine this with more complex/ interesting combinations from within home-assistant, like SIP calling internal- or external phone numbers, enabling video cameras, etc. Heck, even sending a fax would be possible (just not sensible)
  • roping in an ONVIF compliant PoE camera would be trivial as well, but that's nothing I needed so far (did some experiments with an esp32-cam module for fun, but just didn't need it for production use).

Yes, using home-assistant here is unnecessarily complex - I'm only using it because the home-assistant server was already present anyways - and because zigbee is low-power enough to run reliably on batteries.
Total cost for the setup above:

  • reed contact, 10 pieces for maybe ~40 cents
  • water sensor used as dry contact (snip off the lead, solder the reed contact to it - tried a door sensor first, but its hall sensor wasn't sensitive enough and connecting a better reed contact would have been more complex), <5 EUR
  • zigbee siren ~12 EUR a pop

This whole setup is strictly add-on (reliably firing additional zigbee sirens in other rooms), not touching the functionality of the traditional ringer. The whole zigbee/ home-assistant side can go down without affecting the existing gong (which continues to do its job).

There certainly are better solutions, much lower tech (e.g. an esp8266 (with reed contact or optocoupler) could make an SIP call all by itself, without home-assistant - but I simply can't sensibly keep that powered long term in that location), but my solution works and builts upon infrastructure that was already there (and is low-power enough to make battery life a non-issue).

The Siedle intercom makes this more complex, as there might not be a trivial way to decode the ringer signal and pass it on - it's still very much possble (if you are allowed to open the intercom, hook onto its PCB and use its capabilities <-- needs specific investigation, it's all possible, just no longer trivial).

15

@slh Thanks a lot of explaining your setting! Our Ssiedl seems to be electro-mechanic (I hear zzzzz like something is vibrating and hitting), so ESP8266 with Optocoupler/reed may be indeed an option for me. I would be allowed to open Ssiedl if the other people think that it's very good idea to set it up so that it will also call a telephone number. I picture it that it would become necessity within a few years.

In fact, among what you wrote, my acutest need now is sending a fax.... I had to sweat on it yesterday for a few hours, because, probably after the recent update, Fritzbox lost compatibility with the fax machine that a bakery has, to which someone has to send fax every once in a while. That killed my fax script (using selenium), so that she can't send fax alone anymore over her smartphone, I have to do it manually whenever she needs. I would be super interested in how to send a fax using ESP8266. I don't have any home assistant.

16

A fax??
If you hook up an analog modem (a hardware modem, not a soft-modem) to an ESP, it should be rather easy to send a preconfigured fax. But where are you going to attach the analog modem to?

An easier solution without all this hassle would be a web service that is triggered by the ESP. There are web fax gateways that allow you to do exactly that. As an alternative you could set up HylaFAX. It's been a few years since I last used that and I don't know if it's still maintained, but it should allow you to trigger sending a fax via a network connection. Back then, I used analog USB modems that I had to get from the used market (hardware modems, not software).

17

@andyboeh Thanks a lot for the hints! HylaFAX seems like a holy grail for me. I will have to spend time understanding it, but it would be probably a good replacement for Fritzbox GUI. (unless Fritzbox fixes the problem: I think it's unlikely, nobody cares about fax.) I am reading hardware compatibility list, I don't really understand what they are;; I will have to postpone the project to the weekend.....

18

While this now veers into off-topic territory, many roads lead towards Rome...

  • API calls (TR-064) to the F!B
  • fake printer driver to the F!B
  • API calls, fake printer driver, mail to a multi-function device (vulgo printer/scanner/copier/fax)
  • API calls to a mail2fax gateway on the web

that would be the easy options, but there are also more complex ones

  • serial Hayes compatible fax modem and a max232 level shifter
  • USB Hayes compatible fax modem
  • ...

Quite frankly, if you need anything more complex than API calls or mails, you're better suited with a small ARM SBC (RPi-zero class) or x86_64 thin client, using a normal linux distro, rather than an esp8266. HylaFax remains a keyword, maybe asterisk, even ISDN (in combination with a compatible F!B might remain an option).

Many ways...

I'm still using a classic fax machine, in the form of a multi-function device (laser printer/scanner/copier/fax). While I have the F!B fax function active on a dedicated MSN, I haven't used that in years, the dedicated fax machine gets used irregularly frequently though.

19

@andyboeh @slh After sweating a lot, I found out that the bakery doesn't have Fax anymore !!! So in the end, Fritzbox was innocent (except that it always had some problem, especially in receiving Fax, which I solved by forwarding to Telekom Fax Center). So my acute problem was solved :slight_smile: