Door bell - and I mean 'BELL'

The "own brand" chimes I bought in Wickes are pretty loud. You get one mains sounder and one battery sounder. Choice of 4 chimes (IIRC).

I have a couple of brand new Byron bells (the butler sort)!

And a bell pull..with cord and pulleys.

BTW...on a DIY note.

Our bell push activates all of the phones in the house ringing with a special cadence. We never miss the bell now, but getting to the door before the ParcelForce man runs away is another story.

If its electronic it must be capable of feeding its output to something else like an amp I'd have thought. I think some bells and intercoms can have multiple bell pushes and multiple remote handsets or stations. I'd imagine it would be more expensive. Another thing to think about is sites that sell items for the hard of hearing of course. Brian

The ideal would be a base station with a simple relay on its output. That would allow you to use a sounder of your choice. You can still buy the 'normal' underdome bell from TLC, etc.

One thing I don't like about wireless push-buttons is that they merely trigger the sounder to give its standard response. Wired bells gave you some indication of how desperate the caller was, by length and spacing of rings.

Rob Graham laid this down on his screen :

Friedland offer a very good, very reliable wireless chimes system. It has longer range, 100m outdoors and more than one chimes unit can be added to it. It is very loud and there are a few tunes to choose from. Some have a bright flashing light, useful for the deaf or were you want to be sure it has been triggered. Unlike some, I have never known them be false triggered.

Make your own!

I did it when I was about 9 by just folowing some simple instructions - try the local junior library (if they have any 'proper' books anymore).

We used mine as our doorbell for many years.

A wireless one? Not bad for a 9 year old.

AC or DC underdome bells are still readily available. The wireless bit may be more of a problem.

Ah - overloooked that the wireless requirement is a must.

I think I might have had a bit of trouble getting octal valves into the bell push ...

Indeed, but there were some very small valves available to the public in the early 1950's before transistors came along later in the decade. I remember acorn valves, but there was also a little triode about 3 cm long and the thickness of a pencil, IIRC. May have been gas-filled. Both types were used in radio controlled model aircraft.

Ah - but my pocket money didn't run to anything fancy like that and the octal types didn't cost me anything!

The real problem with valves was the power supply for the portable bit. Like the bell push in this instance.

I'm old enough to just remember valve radio mics. But can't remember what batteries they used.

Probably used the B7G 'battery' valves (e.g. DF96). 1.4v filament and 90v anode.

Or even the car radio ones which used 12 volt 'HT' as well as 12 volt filaments.

Hardly. Those had either 6.3V 300mA or 12.6V 150mA heaters - you would have needed a hefty battery (or accumulator) to power those!