In reply to a post by MilesR:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

For when the smartphones and power packs all die…good old no frills 2G mobile phone backup: like one of these in the cupboard, £15 from Argos: 3 hours talk time / 130 hours standby time…ought to be good for as long as the mast is stood up. Hmmm. I suppose there’s always the FM radio for outside company too. Just need to remember to charge it periodically and keep the SIM alive.

I have something similar
Have a reminder to have it depleted then charged every 2 months, and a cheap GiffGaff SIM in it.

However, will only be useful until 2033 when they switch off the old networks

Yeah my old SonyEricsson T630 is getting a bit iffy now in the battery department, so I splashed out and got that Alcatel as the emergency mini brick.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Ofcom guidance from 2018 (still current I believe) is here:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016...

The assessment related to ‘at risk’ (I said vulnerable in my reply but unless any QCs amongst us are willing to split the difference…means the same thing) customers is effectively down to the communications provider to undertake at signup or throughout the term.

As far as I’m aware (happy to be corrected) there remains no formal definition or process defined by Ofcom. It’s down to the CP to make a judgement call on which of their customers is ‘at risk’ at the outset of the contract or indeed becomes ‘at risk’ during the period of service. Bit wooly but there you go.

About a year ago my power supplier marked me down as a 'at risk' person due to my then dodgey hip and having a long term 'fit note', TalkTalk wouldn't, they required me to be in receipt of DLA

In reply to a post by burble:

they required me to be in receipt of DLA

I hope they realise DLA is majority replaced by PIP ?

Thaumaturge

Only thing to add to others comments is, you have to persuade them NOT to turn the Router / ONT off at the socket.. This will be a major difference to some old people.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Thaumaturge

Only thing to add to others comments is, you have to persuade them NOT to turn the Router / ONT off at the socket.. This will be a major difference to some old people.

Yes, I'm well aware of that from personal experience. As I've mentioned elsewhere, towards the end my mum who lived alone suffered from dementia, and out of the blue at one point decided to go round unplugging everything at night. Thia included her cordless phone, which then sat and discharged on its base. Of course she never remembered to plug it back in again next day, so her phone was useless. There was a corded one on the hall table, but she couldn't hear that. I had to wire and gaffer tape the power plug into its socket to stop her doing it.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

such as this small battery backup unit from Eaton which costs under £50

I see that particular model only has a rated capacity of 2200mAh, which assuming 3.7V lithium cells is 8.1Wh. It might power a router and ONT for for 30 to 60 minutes if you're lucky; that will go down as the cells age.

If you have a decent mobile signal where you live, then a mobile phone may be a better bet for emergency calls.

Got one here on test...

Currently running a CRS-305-1G-4S. Been running 1 hour and 23 minutes so far and looks like there is plenty of capacity left. I'll run it till it dies and let you know.

Also have a spare N330A-IP DECT base kicking around, so will test on that too; talk time and standby time.

I don't do BT, so cant check with a SH2 unfortunately.

As above I ran the test on a little Mikrotik CRS-305-1G-4S using the Eaton mini UPS to hold it up and got a fairly respectable 3 hours 17 minutes and 51 seconds before the Eaton gave up.

I will have to measure the exact power consumption of the MikroTik when its at idle - but from what I've read it here should be 10 watts in idle, with a max. observed of 13 watts.

Unfortunately I've not been able to test the Gigaset N300A IP DECT base with this UPS as none of the supplied DC barrel tip will fit the N300's power input port. I will have to either splice the lead from the plug pack or make an small adapter lead up with a female to male barel adapter arrangement. So for now I cant say how long it would hold up the N300A.

At some point I may rig it up to an Openreach 1+1 ONT and give that a try.

On closer inspection the Gigaset N300A IP uses a not really typical 6.5 VDC input (600mA rated plug-pack). So on reflection probably not a wise idea to plug the Eaton directly as the lowest voltage it can supply is 9VDC…

So it’s going to require a small DC-DC buck converter, so no magic smoke ensues from the N300A base 😂. I’ve found a half decent one on the Pi Hut website. About a tenner including postage:

https://thepihut.com/products/dc-dc-power-module-25w

This could be useful with other devices that don’t use any of the more standard voltages (9, 12, 15 or 19 VDC) from the Eaton.

Will be interesting to see how much power the N300A base actually draws - should be very low as the standard mains plug pack is barely rated for 4 watts. Expect it should be about 2 watts…will drop it on a bench power supply to see what it draws.

The N300A IP manula suggest 1.2W standby and 1.3W during a call so just under 200mA average.

Thanks MHC. So far am measuring

- 0.735 W (113 mA) with nothing connected at idle
- 0.949 W (146 mA) connected to ethernet network

No handsets active/currently registered. Will need to test with some active calls, but very low draw so far.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by burble:

they required me to be in receipt of DLA

I hope they realise DLA is majority replaced by PIP ?

They might have said DLA or PIP, either way I had just mentioned it in passing whilst on the phone to them, wasn't that worried as my disabilities should have been temporary (they lasted much longer due to cv-19 messing up the health service), I expect that there may be other ways to be listed as vulnerable if you are persistent, but that was the reply I was given.