» MAKE: NOISE — Discuss this article

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• Ringer Conversion
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  Hi there,
  
  I have the ringer conversion set up. But the phone rings very muted and low. Any suggestions. Are my coils damaged. And if yes, how do i test them.
  
  
  thx

  Posted by christoph77 on May 30, 2011 at 14:19:20 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  It's possible that you might need to up the voltage to the coils slightly, or it's possible that the clapper for the bell is stiff, and needs lubrication. Does the clapper move freely? Are any of the wires stopping the clapper from moving properly when the phone is put together?
  
  What wattage power supply are you using? It's possible that you're not getting enough power to pull the clapper over to strike the bell hard enough. Measure the resistance of the coils, and then use V=IR to make sure you have the power needed.

  Posted by Andrew Lewis on May 30, 2011 at 14:35:27 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  The clapper seems to be fine. It is moving freely. I switched form a 12V and 500mA to a 12 V and 1000 mA and still got the same result. I measured the resistance of the coils at 600 Ohm. Using Ohm's law I get I = 0,02 A. So the 500mA wallwart should have worked fine, shouldn't it?
  
  Anyway, I realized that the clapper only strikes one bell repeatedly. Could it be, that my coils are wired up differently?
  
  Thank you very much!

  Posted by christoph77 on June 02, 2011 at 06:57:31 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  A problem with the ringer wiring sounds very plausible. Are you definitely getting a voltage on both coils when the phone is ringing? It could be that one of the transistors is faulty, or there is a loose wire.

  Posted by Andrew Lewis on June 02, 2011 at 07:47:16 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  You were right, it was a problem with the ringer wiring. I should have payed more attention to how the coils were wired up initially. My bad, thanks for your help.
  
  So far I have overcome all obstacles and right now I'm waiting to get my hands on a nano and finish your awesome project.
  
  I still got one problem though. The USB Phone and the amplifier work fine when I plug the wallwart into the arduino but as soon as I connect the arduino also to my computers usb port I loose most of the amplification and I get added powerline hum.
  
  Any suggestions?
  
  Thanks again!

  Posted by christoph77 on June 19, 2011 at 11:22:22 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  adding a couple of smoothing caps on the 7805 should take care of the mains hum (like this: http://www.sminntech.com/images/7805datasheet.gif). If you're not using a 7805, then add the smoothing caps across the power input.
  
  I'm not sure what's affecting the amplification. It sounds like you might have a ground fault somewhere. Make sure that the ground lines are all connected, particularly on the audio lines. Try temporarily shorting the gnd of the speaker to the gnd of the power supply and see if that makes a difference.

  Posted by Andrew Lewis on June 19, 2011 at 11:35:26 Pacific Time

• Ringer Conversion
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  By Gnd, I mean the 0 volt line, obviously - not the shielding.

  Posted by Andrew Lewis on June 19, 2011 at 11:36:14 Pacific Time

• Rotary Dial
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  Hi,
  
  despite my problems with the ringer conversion. I managed to read the numbers of the rotary dial with a little bit of arduino code. I intend to change your .py script to hand the numbers over to the sykpe program.
  
  Since you do not give any licensing information, I'd like to know if you mind publishing your altered code here in the comments so that other people can use it?
  
  thx

  Posted by christoph77 on June 02, 2011 at 07:04:14 Pacific Time

• Rotary Dial
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  Excellent! That was on my list of "things to get around to at some point" :) The code is LGPL, so feel free to alter and modify! :)

  Posted by Andrew Lewis on June 19, 2011 at 11:25:22 Pacific Time