How to connect a door bell transformer to the mains?

[John Rumm]

If you want to use a DIN rail transformer, then you can get separate enclosures to put them in.

[Bill Wright]

My grandad used to wait til dark then nip out the back to the railway line and nick a couple of great big black square dry cells out of the wooden box at the side of the line when his doorbell stopped working.

Bill

[Tim+]

When we moved to Scotland in the sixties, we found some of these for operating the bells.

[Bill Wright]

But our dogs are from the home for mentally defective dogs.

Bill

[DJC]

Taking the floorboards up in my flat has revealed several lengths of wire connected to right-angled levers which I assume to be remnants of the original bell system.

[Michael Chare]

Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

[Albert Zweistein]

I Googled for a way but I just couldn't find anything.

[Graham.]

We had some of those in school. The rather old text book we had told us that the carbon rod in a dry cell was enclosed in a muslin (not Muslim) bag which also contained the manganese dioxide depolariser. The bag being equivalent to the porous pot of a Leclanché cell I had dismantled countless U2 cells by this time and had never seen such a bag.

[Graham.]

My late grandparents lived in Forest Road Edinburgh, it was one of six flats. There were three mechanical bell pulls on each side of the front door, on brass escutcheons. It rang a bell on a spring in the kitchen. There were three bells altogether, one was rung from a Bakelite handle on the lounge wall, the third one I don't remember, probebly rung from the bedroom. When the front doorbell rang the maid* wouldn't have to go downstairs to open the door, as there was a brass lever on the 1st and 2nd floor landing that lifted the heavy latch on the front door with wires and pulleys.

The front door key was strange, you didn't turn it, you used it as a lever to lift the latch from the outside. A child's finger could be used to the same effect.

My grandparents didn't actually have a maid.

[Johnny B Good]

+1

I fitted an ex-GPO 12/24v dc trembler bell by the front door, about a foot or so above the bell push and hung 24 volts worth of AA alkaline cells in a battery pack made up of a pair of 8 x AA cell holders stuck back to back with double sided adhesive tape about 25 years ago.

The battery pack must have lasted a good 15 years before the bell started getting a little bit quiet. The big problem was the corroded battery holder contacts due to the "long Life" alkalines starting to leak.

I can't complain, 15 or more years must have been at least a 30 quid saving in electricity used by the typical mains powered bell 'vampire' :-)

I did consider cleaning the battery holder contacts and buying a fresh set of AA cells until I realised it was going to both be a waste of time and an unnecessary expense considering that the battery had been way over- specced in the first place.

Our local pound shop were selling 27 volt's worth of zinc carbon PP3s in convenient blister packs, complete with a handy hole by which to hang it off the screw used by the original 24v pack. All it was lacking was a couple of battery straps which I swiftly remedied with a couple of wire links (short lengths of CPC from the end of a scrap piece of 2.5mm FT&E) and some resin cored solder.

The bell wires were simply wrapped and twisted around the end battery terminals before the 'battery pack' was hung up on the supporting screw about two or three years ago now. The battery is still going strong so an even more cost effective (and less bulky) solution than the first one.

Even if they needed replacing once a year, that'd still cheaper than the

2 or 3 quid's worth of electricity typically consumed by a bell transformer each year (and the soldering job to strap the PP3s into a 27v battery configuration is less than 20 minutes' worth of 'faffing around' with a soldering iron.

I can't recall whether I'd had the foresight to write the commissioning date somewhere on the battery packaging. I might check it later on this morning. It'd be very handy to know more precisely than "two or three years ago". It's most definitely been more than a year and it may even be as much as three years ago. Still, even just one year's worth of service leaves me 'quids in' :-)

Anyhow, I started worrying about whether I could still buy a replacement battery pack about 6 months ago and bought another two or three as insurance against these packs suddenly being reduced to just two PP3s per pack as I'd noticed in one of the other pound shops.

I double wrapped these 'spares' in polyethylene bags and put them in a clearly marked ice-cream tub placed in the bottom of the freezer for long term storage. I'd confirmed that zinc carbon batteries can be safely stored at such low temperatures beforehand so I should have enough to keep the bell going for another decade or two. :-)

[Johnny B Good]

And, even fewer know how to use a bell pull.

[Chris J Dixon]

I removed a Byron which kept giving spurious signals, despite attempts to get it to change channels.

I now have a Libra+, with plug-in sounder, which looks well made, and is performing fine so far.

I eventually bought a second sounder, and installed it near the front door, so that callers could also hear it, otherwise they don't believe it has worked, and start thumping the door as well.

Chris

[Chris J Dixon]

The family house was a Victorian semi, and it originally had a bell board in the kitchen, and many of the wires and linkages were still in place. If you pulled on the wires in the attic, you could still hear movement behind the bell board location. One of the original bells on its coiled spring mount was still lying in the cellar.

Clearly the servant accommodation had been in the attic, because there was a separate bell pull running directly there from the master bedroom beneath.

The next generation - an electric bell board with about 4 flag indicators - was still in place, but not working, when we moved in around 1955.

Chris

[News]

In message , Bob Eager writes

I find this intriguing. We have four cordless phones around the house, and making each one ring when the door bell button is pushed sounds perfect. There must be a simple ready made device available to achieve that, but where? All I can find are far more sophisticated devices with intercoms, which I don't need. Curiously, the cordless phones work well in this house, despite the walls. The phones work better than wi-fi or cordless door bells.

[Bob Eager]

I think one quite important thing for us was that the 'ring' sounds different. I made it six short, closely spaces pulses. Then another six.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I think the clue is that Bob has a PBX. Basically, his own mini exchange at home.

That would be more work than just wiring up a few doorbells. ;-)

[News]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Yes, but there are systems available, at a price, that use the phone to create a door bell with intercom system.

There must be a simpler (and cheaper!) system that does nothing more than tell four phones to ring, with a unique ring, whenever the door bell button is pressed. Or perhaps not.

[spuorgelgoog]

If the base unit has a 'page' or 'find me' button, extend that to the door push.

Otherwise you need a device to:

- generate AC ringing

- disconnect cordless phone from phone line

- apply AC ringing to cordless phone

- reconnect cordless phone to phone line

- not disconnect any calls in progress while doing the above

- do something different if already on a call, such as applying audio tone to the phone call, which requires

- detecting whether the phone is in use or not

which isn't trivial to design from first principles, although the actual circuit wouldn't be too difficult to build.

Owain

[tabbypurr]

transformer

relay

comparator/transistor to not energise the relay if line = 12v

oscillator

comparator or a FET to stop the oscillator

Nothing hard about it if you can do elec eng, but it's time consuming and nonapproved - and most diyers don't have the skill set.

NT

[dennis]

Put the bell push across the page button on the base.