Alternate router with a phone socket?

[SheepRustler]

Hello,

I have fibre to the house and a Huawei 4 port ONT (I think it’s called) and a Home hub 2. Because the wifi coverage was so poor across my house (an old stone farmhouse) I fitted 4 deco x20s running in access point mode and these are wired using ethernet cables back to a TP Link switch which is plugged into the homehub. All good. My question is that I am only keeping the BT home hub as I need somewhere to plug my house phone in and I have USB drive in the usb port.

As we get frequent power cuts and have no mobile coverage I’ve fitted several small UPS units (each rated 1.2A continuous,  1.5 A peak) to the Huawei (1A)  + the TP Link switch (0.2A), one of the Decos (1.2A) and my house phone (0.3A) and these give me around an hour internet and longer on the phone but the current draw on the HH is too great (1.5A) and trips the UPS so I’d have no phone connection which concerns me a bit. I have disabled all WiFi on the home hub and the LED lights in an effort to reduce power consumption.

I have an old TP link router that has a USB socket and  much lower consumption (0.6A) but no phone socket and the ‘phone’ sockets on the Huawei don’t seem to work so am I stuck with the homehub and getting a bigger UPS or can anyone suggest an alternative? 

thanks
Steve

[licquorice]

Digital Voice will ONLY work with the SH2 homehub.

[jac_95 · Accepted solution]

@SheepRustler afraid BT Digital Voice requires the BT Smart Hub 2 to work so you won't be able to use an alternative router.

What UPS device are you using?

[SheepRustler]

OK, not what I was hoping to hear but thanks very much for your prompt reply.

I’ve been using these USB-C Aether UPS modules for a while now on some Arduino projects and they have given good results - with 2 x 18650 batteries they last for weeks but the smart hub obviously pulls a lot more current and it’s close to the limit. The units have two LEDs,  one to show battery output is on, the other bicolour status LED. red = batteries charging, green = batteries charged, no LED = over capacity. With the SH2 (and

 

 

with a WD HDD spinning) the status light flickers on off so I suspect it’s right on the edge. I’ll look for something a bit more suitable.

thanks again,