2 edits
1 recommendation |
Obihai disabled my device. Demanding $10 feeI know this has been discussed in other threads. Most suggest to upgrade the firmware manually but it seems Obihai has disabled the local admin web server on my Obi100, so I cannot update manually. My router is setup to always assign the Obihai's MAC the same IP address, but to confirm I press *** then 1 on my phone and the voice prompt says "Your IP address is not available. DHCP is enabled." So I tried setting a static IP. It allowed me to set a static IP but then says "IP address is not available." On the ObiTalk portal I'm given this message: said by obitalk.com :This OBi device's annual support entitlement has expired. An important software update with enhanced security and ease of use features is required to maintain Google Voice service on this OBi device. To automatically upgrade this device using the OBiTALK portal as well as get access to Obihai’s Premium Support help desk, a paid support plan is required. To purchase 1-year of Obihai Premium Support, use the button found in the Support and Warranty tab. When device's support status is Active, the software update can continue by selecting the update triangle adjacent to the device, in the OBiTALK dashboard. |
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1 recommendation |
Have you tried doing a factory reset of the device? |
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15 recommendations |
to VOIPUSER0
This seems a bit strange to me. Yes they have been trying to get user to pay $10 to upgrade firmware, but if you don't it hasn't seemed to affect existing Google voice accounts, and certainly not your ability to log into your device locally. And as far as I know you can still log into the Obitalk portal on such accounts. I'm just wondering if maybe you set an admin password on your device and then forgot it. If you did, you should be able to see or change it on the Obitalk portal, without paying anything. And you can still download the new firmware from links found in the Obitalk forum, and apply it locally, and that should make that message go away. And if all else fails you should be able to do the factory reset, but that will erase all your settings.
Also, that message you hear when you dial *** 1 sounds like the device is not able to communicate with the network. Try a different network cable, or a different port on your router. Everything you are posting suggests to me that the device isn't communicating with the network properly, at least not consistently. That would also explain why you can't connect to the local web server.
Just as an aside, as far as I am concerned this whole business of trying to extort less knowledgeable users into paying for a support plan just to be able to do easy firmware updates really sucks. It instantly changed my opinion of Obihai from "great company" to "greedy bastards" and I while I used to recommend their devices, I don't do so any longer. |
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 mozerdLight Will Pierce The Darkness
MVM
join:2004-04-23
Nepean, ON
1 recommendation |
mozerd
MVM
2016-Jan-16 10:31 am
said by WhyADuck:It instantly changed my opinion of Obihai from "great company" to "greedy bastards" and I while I used to recommend their devices, I don't do so any longer. IMO, absolutely NOTHING greedy about Obi's business practices, and $10 per year to provided Technical support + firmware upgrades is DIRT cheap for a BYOD gear. Three CHEERS to free Enterprise and capitalism. |
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to VOIPUSER0
If you haven't already done so, reboot the OBi by removing AC power, waiting several seconds, then plugging it back in. What phone services do you have on the device? Are they working? Without an IP address, I would assume not, though perhaps only the report is erroneous. advocate99  's suggestion of factory reset is a good one, though you might try other troubleshooting first, if you have a complex configuration and no backup file. What do you know about the device's network connectivity? Can you ping it? Have you tried another cable and port, as suggested by WhyADuck ? Does the link indicator on the router LAN port come on? The indicator on the OBi? Any useful info displayed by router, e.g. DHCP lease time remaining? Does your router show link speed, either by indicator or on its Web page? If so, unless you set the OBi or router to force 10 Mbps, you should see a 100 Mbps connection. |
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Stewart
22 recommendations |
to mozerd
said by mozerd:IMO, absolutely NOTHING greedy about Obi's business practices, and $10 per year to provided Technical support + firmware upgrades is DIRT cheap for a BYOD gear. Though we often disagree, I'm with WhyADuck on this one. Yes, $10 per year for tech support is cheap. Yes, they have the right to provide updates only to paying customers. However, they say: said by VOIPUSER0:An important software update ... is required to maintain Google Voice service on this OBi device. That statement is false. Management knows it's false, i.e. it is a LIE. That's a sleazy business practice and may be illegal. |
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1 recommendation |
said by Stewart:Yes, $10 per year for tech support is cheap. Yes, they have the right to provide updates only to paying customers. However, they say: quote:
An important software update ... is required to maintain Google Voice service on this OBi device.
That statement is false. Management knows it's false, i.e. it is a LIE. That's a sleazy business practice and may be illegal. 1+ |
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PX Eliezer1
16 recommendations |
to mozerd
said by mozerd:IMO, absolutely NOTHING greedy about Obi's business practices, and $10 per year to provided Technical support + firmware upgrades is DIRT cheap for a BYOD gear.
Three CHEERS to free Enterprise and capitalism. It's not about cheap, it's about changing the rules in the middle of the game. Obihai is entitled to not provide support, and to not provide upgrades, but it is wrong to cripple (or threaten to cripple) the device that was paid for. |
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12 recommendations |
to mozerd
said by mozerd:IMO, absolutely NOTHING greedy about Obi's business practices, and $10 per year to provided Technical support + firmware upgrades is DIRT cheap for a BYOD gear. I would not have had a problem with it if they had sold it that way from the beginning. However, for a couple of years or so they sold Obihai devices using the ability to connect to Google Voice as a major selling point, and after the original Obihai devices had been out for a few months they set up the Obitalk portal and encouraged everyone to use it for configuration of their devices. There were people in this group who said it was a bad idea to use their portal and I could never understand why, since it seemed to make configuration a lot easier, especially if you were managing devices for people (such as extended family members) remotely. And they even offered the firmware with the Google Voice oAuth support for a time, so that was apparently not what drove them to this. What upset me, and many others, is that they instituted this charge with no advance warning. It was as if you woke up one morning and found they had built the Berlin wall between you and their firmware, and the only way to get through it to pay the $10 or find a way around it. If they had said, "Hey, everybody, in a few months we're starting a paid support option and after that only paid support customers will be able to obtain firmware updates via our portal" then people would have had time to update their devices, even though there was no pressing technical reason to because the old method of accessing Google Voice (using a username and password) still works. But they didn't, they just decided to throw all their past customers under the bus on this one. As I said, it's one thing if you charge for something from day one but if you have been offering it free for two or three years and all of a sudden you start charging with no advanced warning (and no really good explanation of why the charge is necessary and why you couldn't warn people it was coming in advance) then people are going to hate your guts. And then there's the point that Stewart made. It's NOT a requirement to update the firmware to maintain Google Voice service; to this day Google Voice still works fine using the username and password login method, and Google has not made any announcements to indicate that will change on any upcoming date (not that I particularly trust anything Google says, but that's another discussion). So (in my opinion) they are indeed lying to people in an unethical attempt to get them to pay $10 for something they can get for free, if they just know how to install it themselves rather than using the Obitalk portal (and now I understand why people were discouraging the use of that - as it turns out, that probably wasn't the best idea - and who knows what else Obihai is cooking up?). In my mind it's a little like those sleazy telemarketers and their auto warranty service scams, in that they try to convince gullible people that they need to sign up for their service but the service actually offers very little real value. That's just my opinion (as is this entire post) but in my mind Obihai has slid down into the pit of companies that have chosen to embrace the dark side when dealing with their existing customers, so now if someone wants Google Voice service to work with their phone I would suggest they get a Grandstream or other VoIP device, and pay the one-time-only fee to use the Simon Telephonics Google Voice Gateway. It's cheaper in the long run and it just works with any sip-compatible VoIP adapter or softphone. Again, if this had been their business model from the beginning, nobody would have been as ticked off with them as some of us are now, but then again many of their current customers might have chosen not to purchase their products in the first place, and they most likely would not have been as highly recommended in their early days. |
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 graysonf
MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
2 recommendations |
to VOIPUSER0
My OBi200 has been connected to the OBiTalk portal since I got it a few years ago. It still gets firmware updates and I have never seen anything telling me I have to spend $10 to get the updates. |
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MangoUse DMZ and you get a kick in the dick.
Premium Member
join:2008-12-25
www.toao.net
16 recommendations |
Mango
Premium Member
2016-Jan-16 12:38 pm
I wonder which would make Obihai more money:
1) Making firmware upgrades difficult, then charging $10 to make them easier again, or
2) Reinstating features that have been removed, taking users' feature requests seriously, providing complete and accurate documentation including changelogs, and generally being the best in the industry so that it would be silly to buy any other manufacturer's hardware. |
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1 edit |
to graysonf
said by graysonf:My OBi200 has been connected to the OBiTalk portal since I got it a few years ago. It still gets firmware updates and I have never seen anything telling me I have to spend $10 to get the updates. How do you get your firmware updates? If you are logging into the ObiTalk portal I am surprised you don't get this message. However, I understand that some users can still dial *** 6 and obtain firmware updates that way. If you never log in to the ObiTalk portal you would probably never see that message. Also I think it might be different for the Obi2xx series in that dialing *** 6 to get the upgrade still works, though that may or may not be true in any particular case. I don't think it works on the OBi1xx series. But in any case, when you see that message on the ObiTalk portal, you are not told about the option of dialing *** 6. Also, you might not get that message if you have already upgraded your firmware to one of the oAuth authentication versions. I honestly don't know what Obihai's criteria is for who sees that message and who doesn't, but enough people apparently have seen for it to have become a topic of conversation here. |
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WhyADuck
1 recommendation |
to Mango
said by Mango:I wonder which would make Obihai more money:
1) Making firmware upgrades difficult, then charging $10 to make them easier again, or
2) Reinstating features that have been removed, taking users' feature requests seriously, providing complete and accurate documentation including changelogs, and generally being the best in the industry so that it would be silly to buy any other manufacturer's hardware. Well I think it is obvious by now that they have no inclination to try #2. They just want to try to make money the easy way, by charging for what used to be free (and what is still free for most competing products). |
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graysonf
MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL |
to WhyADuck
I get the updates via the OBiTalk portal. Dialing ***6 also works and that is also mentioned on the portal as another way to get the updates. |
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to WhyADuck
said by WhyADuck:I would not have had a problem with it if they had sold it that way from the beginning. However...... Well said (your entire post). |
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1 recommendation |
to graysonf
said by graysonf:I get the updates via the OBiTalk portal. Dialing ***6 also works and that is also mentioned on the portal as another way to get the updates. This is the type of message we are talking about, found in an ObiTalk forum thread. I still have no idea why some users would see it and you apparently do not. But note that it does not mention using *** 6 as an option. |
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carlm
join:2014-09-29
united state
4 recommendations |
to mozerd
Before this policy went into effect and while my Obi was still in warranty I emailed Obihai twice for support on an issue (after posting to their forum and getting no reply) and never got an answer from Obihai.
Given that, I'd be skeptical about whether Obihai would actually provide support now even if I paid the $10. Obihai has a reputation for being unwilling to talk to customers. Search this forum for examples. |
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1 edit |
Did a full reset. Got a flashing green light, no IP. I guess DHCP is not working. Swapped the ethernet with my desktop to confirm.
I used the phone menu to set a static IP, subnet, DNS (8.8.8.8 google's). Now the Obi MAC is listed as a client on my router but there's nothing on port 80 (NetScanTools port sniffer). Seems the onboard web server is dead.
Option 6 "Software update not available"
I guess I jumped to conclusions when I said Obihai disabled my device, after seeing that message on my account.
My computer bounced yesterday. Maybe there was a power surge and it fried something in the Obi. |
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 flinchlock
Premium Member
join:2003-04-25
Augusta, MI
Obihai OBi200
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to VOIPUSER0
The OBiTalk portal says my Hardware Warranty and Premium Technical Support ended Oct 2015.
On Jan-08-16, my OBi200 had the yellow triangle and I did the update via the OBiTalk portal from 3.0.1.4581 to 3.0.1.4738.
On Jan-15-16, my OBi200 had the yellow triangle and I did the update via the OBiTalk portal from 3.0.1.4738 to 3.1.0.5110.
It also says for $10, "Receive premium technical support via email and phone, from Obihai's Help Desk experts even when your OBi device is not covered by a hardware Warranty."
Hmm, it says nothing about firmware updates.
Mike |
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mdseuss
join:2012-05-27
Worcester, MA |
Same here, I've got 2 obi202 with pending firmware updates, an Obi1032 phone with pending update and nowhere do I see a requirement to spend any money to get those updates.
I did see the warranty thing last year I think but I'm puzzled why all the breathless claims of firmware demands for cash? |
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 burris
Premium Member
join:2000-08-22
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
2 recommendations |
to VOIPUSER0
I have the 202 and I just hit ***6 and the update took maybe 5 minutes. It's at 5110 now.
When I first got my OBI, I had some questions. I only use it for my VOIP ATA...nothing else. My questions were quite simple but the techs had no idea and support was non-existent.
From the forum, I found a few people who knew the product better than the OBI techs. Strange because I was told that the same group that developed OBI were the same ones that designed the PAP2 and SPA2102 ,
Aside from all this, I find the OBI202 to be the best ATA I have ever had and I've tried them all. |
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verix
join:2004-12-30
Oakland, CA |
verix
Member
2016-Jan-17 6:56 am
Are manual firmware upgrades through the web admin interface no longer possible? Their latest firmware page is no longer updated, perhaps purposely so. |
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 GlennLouEarl3 brothers, 1 gone
Premium Member
join:2002-11-17
Richmond, VA |
to VOIPUSER0
Does anyone know... has Obihai sold out to new management/ownership? or just sold out?
Back when they made the big deal about Google giving them the seal of approval due to them beginning to use "proper" auth and there was the expectation of new firmware being forced to every device, I somewhat feared for the [working] safety of my OBi110; but I've made no changes to anything, and neither has anyone else (not Obihai, not Google). It works the same now as it always has--no problems. It's the only thing I use this Google account for.
On the other hand I have another (the "primary") Google account with Voice that I use with a Chromebook (Hangouts--works really well). So, if Obihai did screw up the 110 as part of this dubious scheme of theirs, well, then I'd just switch over to using a Chromebook (or similarly simple) setup. There's no "real" phone hookup [yet] other than forwarding to cell, but it's a nice hands-free speakerphone-like arrangement, so that hasn't been a problem. |
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to WhyADuck
I am a bit confused with what I should do with my Obi200. I bought it a couple of years ago, maybe a bit less, I never did an upgrade, never opened any account with Obihai and the device works fine, even with google. My newest asterisk works with googlevoice too, so I do not really need to use that obi feature. (Obi200 version 3.0.1 (Build: 4367) HW 1.4 )
Is an upgrade really worth? After reading all these comments about the obi devices, I am hesitant of buying another one. |
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to carlm
said by carlm:Before this policy went into effect and while my Obi was still in warranty I emailed Obihai twice for support on an issue (after posting to their forum and getting no reply) and never got an answer from Obihai.
Given that, I'd be skeptical about whether Obihai would actually provide support now even if I paid the $10. Obihai has a reputation for being unwilling to talk to customers. Search this forum for examples. I have a different experience. I have contacted support a few times and they have responded promptly with satisfactory info. Once I had two Obi 202s burned up by lightning. I sent them back for warranty. They responded that they were messed up by lightning and that is not covered by warranty but as a courtesy they sent me one new one anyway at no charge. I think they have good customer service. That all happened in the past year. |
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| lmartin12 |
to burris
said by burris: I find the OBI202 to be the best ATA I have ever had I agree. Between myself and my family I manage 5 Obi202s and 2 Obi200s. The only problem I have had was one case of lightning. |
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| lmartin12 |
to WhyADuck
said by WhyADuck:There were people in this group who said it was a bad idea to use their portal and I could never understand why, since it seemed to make configuration a lot easier, especially if you were managing devices for people (such as extended family members) remotely. I find the obitalk portal to be of great value. One of the reasons I like Obi devices so much. I can make changes to the multiple devices I manage right here from home real easy. |
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1 recommendation |
to WhyADuck
said by WhyADuck:There were people in this group who said it was a bad idea to use their portal and I could never understand why, since it seemed to make configuration a lot easier, especially if you were managing devices for people (such as extended family members) remotely. Although the portal provides an easy and reasonably secure of managing systems remotely, I never had the urge to try it, because it's another layer of complexity, potential unreliability (there have been several outages) and possible bugs. It's a good bet that your extended family also asks you for help with their PC / DVR / router / whatever. To remotely access those, you'll use a VPN / TeamViewer / SSH tunnels / port forwarding / pick-your-poison. Whatever you choose will also work for the OBi -- you won't have to learn and administer something different. Likewise, if the remote OBi is one on your property when you are not there, e.g. office, vacation home, rental unit, it's a good bet that there is other stuff to monitor and manage (security cameras, alarm system, HVAC, weather station, etc.), so the same logic applies. |
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said by Stewart:Although the portal provides an easy and reasonably secure of managing systems remotely, I never had the urge to try it, because it's another layer of complexity, potential unreliability (there have been several outages) and possible bugs. Other than two short outages the Obitalk portal has worked flawlessly for me. said by Stewart:It's a good bet that your extended family also asks you for help with their PC / DVR / router / whatever. To remotely access those, you'll use a VPN / TeamViewer / SSH tunnels / port forwarding / pick-your-poison. Whatever you choose will also work for the OBi -- you won't have to learn and administer something different. Currently I am only managing their VOIP and when I started I didn't know how to use VPNs etc. However I see it coming that I will become the family IT man.  |
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mozerdLight Will Pierce The Darkness
MVM
join:2004-04-23
Nepean, ON
1 recommendation |
to Stewart
I LOVE ObiTalk .. Has worked for me and the many clients I manage without incident. I highly recommend ObiTalk! |
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