Hey all,

The house we bought recently is old and has been having work done, in the course of this work the doorbells for both units got hosed. I have found all the parts, but the wiring is a nightmare knob and tube reused, new stuff spliced in when wires were relocated etc.

My fox and hound set was a causualty of the move, I'm sure it will turn up someday, but I need to get the doorbells going ASAP. Being that we have a large and varied geek collective at the HF, I'm guessing one or more folks might have a set I could barrow?

Let me know if you do, this is to be used only on dead wires to verify and trace, I've taken the transformer out for now, so the signal generator and sounding / senor bits are what I'm after.


[if you don't know what I'm talking about here's a description]

This might be an interesting project to build too, could get fancy with an Arduino, or just a 555 or the like for basic stuff, hmmm.

Thanks

Pete

Hey,

I lost mine a while back too, I think my brother has it, so I will check and let you know.

But the way I fixed mine (two doorbells, two sets of wire and an over zealous helper who pulled the wires off the switches before labeling) was a 9v battery and a voltage meter (or current indicator such as a LED would work too if you connected the LED in the right way or test both)

If I hear from my brother today / Monday I will let you know.

I have an el-cheapo tone generator and probe set from Home Depot. It's adequate, as long as you don't need to trace wire behind walls. It generally works fine as long as you can actually touch the probe tip to the wire. I can try to find it today if you like.

Steve,

The tone generator would be great, I have access to the wire ends and enroute junctions everywhere. I can pick it up if you find it, let me know.

Thanks

Pete

Sure, someone should be home soon to keep an eye on my boy while I look for it, and then I'll go dig it out of the basement and shoot you an email or a PM or something.

Great thanks,

email sent.

That was just what I needed, doorbells are working,

Thanks

If anyone is interested this is the ringer side of things. I'd never seen one like this. It has a pair of coils that pull a little indicator arrow arm left or right to indicate Back or Front, (I think the original graphic or whatever got lost, or maybe it was painted on the glass and the glass got broken). As I looked at it further it seems it could indicate front or back for both the upper and lower unit. The house was built as a duplex, and we couldn't figure out why you'd want to hear both bells, maybe just an option, it was only wired for one floor, but has both sets of coils and indicators.

The stub sticking out of the bottom gets pushed up to release the indicator arm and reset the system to it's neutral state. It would act as a, someone dropped by, indicator too I guess, since it holds it's state.

Kind of a neat steam punky door bell setup.



Pete

Glad you were able to get it figured out. That's a pretty awesome doorbell. Did you see any manufacturer information on it? I've never seen anything quite like that before. Reminds me of railway signalling and telegraph stuff. Definitely very steampunky.

Didn't see any names on it. The coils are all the same and seem mass produced, but that's all, the box etc looks hand made.

Pete