Sound system door bell

[Onceuponatime]

I want to have one door push button that rings, chimes or buzz's in four/five different rooms with the ability to turn each room off or down individually. I have been told that you can't run more than 2 door bells off of one push. So I thought I could run a sound system with individually controlled volume switches, any idea how I can get a sound in to it?

 

[crof2003]

This is interesting. I don't think I have any answers for you, but I have questions

Do you already have a doorbell system in mind? Making your own system? Wires or wireless? Speakers or a physical sound making device (e.g. Chime)

I'm not an expert at all, so I'm just rambling but... I'd say the easiest way hardware wise to DIY would be run wires to the rooms and put a switch or dinner type device before the ringer/buzzer at each room. That's assuming the power for buzzing/ringing is coming from a central place and the power from that wire isn't just for signaling if the door bell has been pushed

I'm curious about the "you can't run more than two bells off of one push"...

 

[Onceuponatime]

We had wireless chimes but due to thick walls, electrical interference etc. they aren't very good, these are the second set we have had, so it's a no to wireless. I asked a company that specialises in door bells and got this "
Hello Jason.

I regret, you cannot have this number of bell units on 1 system, the
maximum we recommend is 2, with a maximum cable length of 9 m.

You will suffer "voltage drop" along the cable length at the voltages
that doorbells operate at, and the units will not receive enough power."

So gave up on traditional bells, and I suppose I was just rambling too, I know you can get speakers that had their own volume controls I just thought I could run four speakers of an amp, instead of bells, my first thought was run a mic from the amp and place it by a traditional door bell, but I thought someone might know a better way of getting a sound into the system at the press of the bell push.

Thanks for your interest.

 

[herm0016]

what kinda goings on do you have to need it to ring in certain rooms? how about adapting an intercom system, like from an old apartment building.

 

[Onceuponatime]

Haha it does sound strange, it's not for a house it's for my wife's nursery school, they have 3 classes and a kitchen and when someone comes to the front door it could be for any of them so each room needs to hear the bell, the bells need to be able to be turned down or off (eg. If babys are sleeping ).

 

[jlee]

Haha it does sound strange, it's not for a house it's for my wife's nursery school, they have 3 classes and a kitchen and when someone comes to the front door it could be for any of them so each room needs to hear the bell, the bells need to be able to be turned down or off (eg. If babys are sleeping ).

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/211023483-SkyBell-HD-Video-Doorbell ?

 

[JeffMD]

if your looking for a system that does it all then you will be disappointed. However such a thing would easily be done with a PA amp that supports multiple channels out per one input, bringing the wire (You dont need multi channel so 2 wires each is fine) to each room, and then using a
potentiometer for your volume control. From a computer tech method... have the ringer feed into a live audio stream and have a computer in each room continuously stream from this live stream. (Said "computer" could easily be just a raspberry pi)

 

[Mike64]

You will suffer "voltage drop" along the cable length at the voltages that doorbells operate at, and the units will not receive enough power."

Assuming this applies to you, is there any chance this company would be willing to "work with" (to adopt their use of air quotes) someone who actually understands what "voltage drop" is, and that fact that it can be overcome without great difficulty if you're willing to spend a little more money (for heavier gauge wire, or even a relay or two or three)? (Although I will note that if you're "handy", have the time to devote to it, and the end result doesn't have to be "polished", DIYing it would likely save a lot of money versus "professional installation." And since no high voltage electricity, running water, nor hazardous material would be involved, it's not like a less-than-perfect job or screwing something up could create any potential danger to anyone, including small children.)

As for

any idea how I can get a sound in to it?

If you do go with an "audio system" sort of set-up, that just depends on the sound you want to come out of the speakers. A small, cheap tone generator would give you straightforward (or even more complex) "sounds", but what with all the small, cheap tech that's available these days, you could pretty easily do anything from that to what amounts to an embedded mp3 player that could play pretty much any audio signal that can be stored as an audio file. just like cell phone ringtones…

PS: Since sleeping babies are involved, you might also consider some sort of visual/light signal, too, instead of just turning the sound down…

 

[crof2003]

So I think generally what we're all saying is "you probably won't find a of the shelf system in a reasonable price range", but if you wanna do it yourself there are a range of options from basic like one PA running to rooms with a potentiometer to adjust volume, to more complex like push button triggering raspberries pi's to play a sound, and even changing the setup a bit to opt for audio or visual signaling per room.

Such a fun project!... But to keep it practical and reliable.... There's the issue....

 

[ericlp]

What you could use is find cheap powered speakers that have volume controls on them, have them all hooked up via rca jacks, going back to be connected to a mp3 player device that would play whatever sound you wanted the door bell to sound like... "GONG!!!" Or take the output of the doorbell you have now and wire in all the speakers inputs to it.

Control the sets of speakers in each room with the volume control that you desire.

 

[Onceuponatime]

Thank you for your reply. that's exactly what I did on Sunday I bought 4 powered 10W pc speakers and took the sound from a door bell by soldering speaker cable from the bells internal speaker. It works a treat and is considerably cheaper than actual door bells.

 

[topsecurity]

Thanks for the post. We are looking for the same thing.