Replace wireless doorbell with a wired one

[harry]

True plus the mains transformer uses power continuously. Not just when the bell is pressed.

[John]

Seems significant.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

As significant as the cost of the batteries?

But I actually want an illuminated bell push. Try doing that with batteries.

[John]

"Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Agreed - my bulb has burned out!

[spuorgelgoog]

I have a small LED lamp with PIR at the front door - runs for over a year on 3 x AA batteries.

It could be a quite noticeable if the two were combined so that the bell push illuminated when someone approaches it.

Owain

[polygonum_on_google]

Strontium aluminate not sufficient? (Obviously, it might not be, but a thought to avoid the need for an electrically driven light emitter.)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Why I fitted LEDs to mine. They do have their uses. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Do you unplug everything in your house when not in use? Things like the cooker which has a clock etc? If not, I'd be most surprised if a decent bell mains power supply makes any measurable difference to your bill.

[Robin]

A small SMPS - eg phone charger - uses less than 0.5 watts no-load, often much less (let's say 0.25W). By my reckoning that's 4.4 or 2.2 kWh per year. Current cost around 60 or 30 pence per annum.

And even cheaper of course if you can take power from a pre-existing supply (eg alarm).

[Bob Eager]

Ours won't light up as it's connected to an input on an Arduino!

[Robin]

I intend it as nothing but a compliment when I say that I'd expected pushing your doorbell to cause (among other things internally) the caller to hear externally something like

[Bob Eager]

That's a good one. I'm actually in the middle of setting up the hardware for playing an arbitrary MP3 file. Not sure what to use yet.

[Tricky Dicky]

If you use multicore wire such as alarm cable then an illuminating LED with appropriate resistor can be wired to the power supply terminals of the Arduino for permanent illumination or to an output of the Arduino if you want it to illuminate when the switch is pressed.

Richard

[Dave W]

I have an old house with a wired bell (through the door's wooden frame), but it uses batteries. They last for many years.

One factor that nobody's mentioned is that an old-fashioned bell gives an indication of how desperate the caller is, as the length of ring (or gap between ding-dong) depends on how long the bellpush is pressed, unlike wireless devices that trigger a standard response.

There is a slight drawback in that if the caller can hear the bell then it may well govern how long the bell gets pressed. In my case with a small echoey hall it's so loud it can make the caller remove the finger instantly, and then the ring is too short for me to notice it faintly upstairs. I've fitted a slave bell upstairs now to solve that problem.

[Bob Eager]

Oh, there are 12 cores in the cable and I'm only using 6 so far. I might do that at some point.

[Graham.]

My bellpush must me over 100 years old

and my doorbell must be 50

But things are never quite what they seem.

[harry]

The really old ones are mechanical. A system of rigid steel wires and bellcranks. (What they were invented for)

The bells to summon the serfs were similar too.

[harry]

Here is a proper bell battery. I came across one of these still in use many years ago.

[tabbypurr]

you don't even need multicore. Just run enough i to illuminate it, either from an output or permanently, the bellpush shorts it giving the duino its input signal.

NT

[tabbypurr]

The beller being able to hear the bell is necessary, otherwise you get a bunch of human behaviour problems.

NT