"Kinetic door bell"

[Jethro_uk]

AS it was explained to me, the crystal causes a pulse which powers a low power RF circuit that pumps out an IoT code to be picked up by the hub.

There's a whole town in Italy rigged with this stuff that monitors the (elderly) residents and uses pattern matching (hence IBMs involvement) to allocate care visits. Because over time you can build up a "regular" pattern of behaviour, and use it to decide if someone might need attention. Obviously no signals from anything over (say) 24 hours could be a sign of distress or death ...

That was a good day out at IBM. They demoed a million pound innovation, and my first question to the team was about the one thing it couldn't do

- but should :)

I remain deeply impressed by Watson. The closest to "AI" by a country mile.

[Andy Burns]

That's what I have ... with my surname in the illuminated window, doesn't stop drivers knocking instead of, or as well as ringing, or asking my surname.

[Another John]

OP here: thanks so much for all the opinions and advice.

I'm having second thoughts about renewing the wifi bell: as more than one person has said "Newer is not necessarily better". (Ho, Yes! I agree with that sentiment alright! "Newer" usually has more convenience, and lots of "neat" new tricks (if you can be arsed); but it brings with it a world of niggles, re-learning, complications, dead-end diagnostics, and ultimately replacement.)

I still have the original decades-old house bell set in place (though not connected). I may decide to reconnect it, and extend the bell wire from the house doorpost through the porch to the porch doorpost.

But first I will try following Dave L's excellent advice concerning sealing something "too well", resulting in condensation: I may have done that, which would explain a lot.

If I go down the re-install-the-old-bell route: is there any advice on drilling through the porch door post (which is the usual uPVC with (I presume) a steel core)?

John

And PS: Jethro_uk <jethro snipped-for-privacy@hotmailb> There's a whole town in Italy rigged with this stuff that monitors the

Ah, god: I still get a little thrill from seeing that acronym! We had a giant 360/67, then a massively bigger giant 370/168 at work, 1967 -

1984. (In this particular case, "newer" was in fact better, by an order of mega-steps :-) We got an Amdahl after that -- astonishingly more impressive; but it didn't have those powerful three letters.

[Jethro_uk]

I would not rely on anything using WiFi.

Or, reversing that, I wouldn't use WiFi for anything I rely on.