Ringing an old phone

Other Hardware General Electronics
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A friend of mine bought an old rotary phone and over a beer we developed the idea that rather than it collecting dust it could be made to use for a door bell. Told him that as a long as there's a way to activate the ringer with some smarts (speak Arduino board, ESP etc.) giving the Arduino a signal from a door bell switch would be the least of our problems.

I saw the discussion here but the post is closed so I wonder how @xxmamakinxx managed to get this going. Is there a circuit diagram and component list I could reference to build this? Any help is much appreciated

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AFAIR a 40 V signal was required to drive the bell.

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This seems to be a popular topic at the moment...

See Capacitor help please (vintage phone)

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More like 75VAC, although I think 40VAC would probably be OK.

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Hello

Take a view here to gain the knowledge.

BTW. I like Borscht to eat.

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See Post #3. Perry Bebbington gives a great link to a very recent discussion. I believe just about every approach was covered. The main issue with using an old phone ringer as a doorbell is the needed supply to drive it. This varied from country to country but they were all similar methods for a ring signal. Most old fashion doorbells worked on about 8 to 16 VAC 60 Hz (US).

If you read through the thread Perry linked to you will see there are drivers actually made to use with old telephone ringer bells but they carry a price tag. Anyway the thread has plenty of suggestions. :slight_smile:
Ron

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Sparkfun converted a dial phone to cell around a decade ago. The project and ringer circuit is here.

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Haha, more like 90 VAC at 20 Hz.

Known as jingle juice, it can light up your eyes if you catch hold of it… ask me how I know. :expressionless:

a7

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That would make you a real ding-a-ling, for sure! :crazy_face:

Almost as bad as an old colour monitor tube, back in the day. Remember the first one of those I got zapped by. WOW!

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I don't need to ask! I worked in telecoms too!

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Wow, thanks guys for all the input and suggestions. Started to take a glance at this and one thing is sure: This won't be an easy project

Guess I have my work cut out for a while :slight_smile:

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There is also this project which I published a few years ago:

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Back in the late 1960s I built a telephone ringer for a stage prop for use in amateur dramatics. It was very similar to the one that @PerryBebbington showed in that link.
It consisted of a multivibrator driving a small mains transformer in reverse.

In order for my group to do both English ring tones
"berrp berrp ...........berrp berrp"
and American ring tones
" berrp ........... berrp ...........",
I just had a push button so that I could imitate either. But you could make the chosen ringing envelope from an Arduino to match your country.

In order to help with the effect of the phone stopping ringing when lifted up I also included a cutout on the handset cradle. One night, one of the actors didn't put the phone down correctly, so on the next cue the phone wouldn't ring. So I had to modify the design so that I had a cradle override switch as well.

Dangerous things amateur dramatics, that's where I met my wife.

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Fixed that for ya'.

a7

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