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What’s included

The Voice Dialler package comprises:

– The Dialler box itself
– Two telecoms cables with appropriate connectors
– A power supply, together with installation instructions.

Connecting the Voice Dialler to your phones:

To enable one of your telephones to be controlled by voice, follow the lead from the phone back to the wall socket, and install the dialler here.

Alternatively, if you have more than one telephone socket in your house, you may wish to install the dialler to benefit all your phones.

In which case, the best place for your dialler is close to where your main BT wall box (where the wires come in from the exchange) is located: then it may be possible for all phones in the house to benefit from voice dialling — however, as the unit is powered, the dialler also requires an electrical socket quite near (within 6ft / 2m or so), so if necessary you can locate it elsewhere, bearing in mind this may restrict which phones can use voice dialling.

Technical Note: If you already have devices plugged into the socket you want to use (for instance a DSL splitter or a pre-dial box) then the voice dialler should plug on the phone side of these units. If you have an emergengy call button, then that must be in parallel to the dialler.

Plug the cables provided into the dialler.

At the wall, unplug the cable to the phone(s) from the BT wall socket, and plug it into the BT socket attached to the dialler, and the cable from the dialler into the BT wall socket.

Pick up a phone to ensure you get a dial tone, as normal. If you don’t, make sure the supplied cables are in the right slots.

Now power up the unit, by plugging the AC power adapter into the mains, and the connector into the dialler socket marked “Power”. The unit lights up blue.

When you lift the phone, you will now hear the voice prompts to allow you to put your first names and numbers into the phone.

Putting your names and numbers into the phone:

A good way of doing this is to organise a list of who you want to be able to dial by voice, and their telephone numbers. These actually may not be the people you dial most, but rather those whose numbers you have difficulty finding and dialling. It may be worth thinking who you might need to contact in an emergency, too.

Lift the receiver on the phone you will use most frequently for voice dialling, and follow the voice prompts (the “pound” key is marked # and normally called “hash” in UK). If you have difficulty reading or dialling, this is where some assistance can be given, but you must be the person to speak the names. For optimum voice recognition, speak clearly, with no background noise (TV, dishwasher, background conversation, etc).

Avoid mono-syllabic names (Jo, Jack, Dad etc) as they can more easily confuse the voice recognition.

When prompted, enter the number using the telephone keypad. You can key in up to 35 digits. You can also put in pauses within the phone number (useful when dialling through PBXs, or using calling cards) by keying ** for a 3 second pause.

Once you have started entering names and numbers, the dialler expects you to enter more. When you have finished putting in numbers, hang up, or press # for the main menu.

Note: Once there is at least one name set up, the voice dialler will not automatically go into this training mode – to subsequently enter more names, press # when you hear the normal voice prompt and follow the instructions.

Voice Dialling:

There is nothing to it! Lift the receiver. Instead of the dial tone, you hear the voice prompt; “name to dial, please”. Now just say the name of the person you want. The dialler will play back the name it has recognised, and dial the number for you.

Occasionally, the dialler may fail to recognise the name you have spoken. You will be told that the number was not recognised and then you will be asked “name to dial, please” again.

If you want to dial up a number normally, press any of the number keys (or *) when you hear the voice prompt. You will hear your normal dial tone, and you can dial using the telephone keypad, as usual.

To access the main menu of options (to add or delete names, or to hear the names in memory), press # after you have heard the voice prompt.

The voice recognition is very robust, and normally has no problems in recognising the names you have given it, even on other telephones in the house or (although the voice recognition is supposed to be speaker dependent) spoken by other people. It even works when you have a cold!

New for the latest version: You can invoke the voice dialler whilst in a call – this means you can put in details like your account number and so on and then use them when using your bank’s automated services!

Also now able to be configured specifically to be compatible with hands-free speaker phones.

Just a small note to say thank you. I duly set up the voice dialler for Mrs Penney and she is absolutely delighted. Many thanks for your help.” – D.Rea

To say that Mum’s delighted with it would be an understatement, thanks very much for supplying this great product, it will make her life so much easier.” – C.Carpenter

[The dialler] works fine with the Spanish telephone system and we got it set up pretty quickly and easily. [My mother] finds it really useful so my sincere thanks. Following my father’s death her ability to communicate with her rather large circle of family and friends – in Spain, UK, Japan, Switzerland to name but a few – has been one of my biggest areas of concern as previously we were limited to her memorising number and/or key sequences. This is a significant enabler and she finds it an absolute boon!” – R. Causer

Many thanks for the dialler. We have set up the dialler and my mother-in-law is able to use it with ease. She is delighted.” – J. Bounds

Thank you for supplying this excellent device that is allowing my mother to maintain contact with her friends and family. We are very grateful.” – D. Pitcher

Thank you very much for the voice activated telephone activator,
My mother in law is delighted that she can now phone people by herself it has given her so much freedom again.” – J. Young

Just a quick note to say thank you for sending the voice dialler. I set it up yesterday for my mother and she is over the moon. She said that it has given her, her life back. It was worth every penny just to see the smile on her face.” – P. Burke