Hello... I have an external chime for a video doorbell. It pairs with the doorbell. Someone presses the doorbell, the chime plays a melody.
I'd like to disassemble the chime, solder a couple wires to the same wires which go to the little speaker, connect them to my Arduino and then detect when the little chime sound starts playing.
Is this even possible? Suggestions? TIA!
probably (with some circuit in between).
There might be other places that are better suited to get the signal. It depends on your doorbell circuit. Do you have the technical documentation of that circuit?
Here are some voltage protection circuits. They can protect against negative voltages or over-voltage so they are pretty safe for unknown voltages.
You'll need a common ground so hopefully you can find ground on the chime circuit.
I'd recommend the 2nd circuit (with 2 diodes). Increase the resistor to between 1K and 10K.
Run the Analog Read Serial Example (take out the delay) and see what you get normally, and when the chime is activated.
Hopefully, you'll see an obvious difference. When the chime is activated the readings may look random, but there should be a difference.
If you're not reading zero (or near zero) with no signal, make two changes: Add a capacitor in series with the resistor (maybe 0.1uF or higher). This will block any DC (when there is no AC audio signal)
Add another higher value resistor in parallel with D2. This resistor should be 10X or more the value of R1. This keeps the analog input from "floating up" when there is no signal.
If the voltage is strong-enough digitalRead() may also work.
A Nano 33 BLE Sense and Sense Rev2 have an on-board microphone and BLE.
Thank you all for the ideas and suggestions, I will certainly take a look at all of these! I really appreciate it.
I don't have the documentation handy, but the circuitry is fairly standard with the two DC wires coming from the transform to power the doorbell. Assuming I can detect a button press by looking at the voltages on those wires, I could probably just insert the Arduino inline somehow rather than try to mess with the speaker circuitry in the remote chime.
jim-p, should I assume you're suggesting I just wire this microphone module to my Arduino, then place it directly on/next to the chime speaker, and analyze the readings I get in my Arduino code? Sounds like a simple solution if that's the case.
Put in the chime box or outside, whichever you like. You just need to do an analogRead and it goes over some threshold do what you want.
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