Brian Gaff (Sofa 2) wrote

What would be nice is if somebody made a good wireless intercom
where the outside bit could be powered from the mains, and which
also allowed you to initiate the intercom from inside as well as out.

Quite a few of the best surveillance cameras can do that and work
much better than just an intercom so you can see that its someone
delivering a parcel or just another ****wit sales fool or a Jovey etc.

I too have suffered from poorly constructed
bell pushes on the intercom or battery box.

They should be using a decent optical sensor
when mains powered, much more reliable.

Or a kinetic switch when not mains powered.

What I did for a while is found out how the door bell bit
worked. it worked by shorting out an in line capacitor in
the speaker wire, thus making it low resistance. This meant
I could just fit a bog standard doorbell push on the box over
the crap button they supplied. Sadly though, it eventually
succumbed to uv and frost and fell to bits, now I have an
intercom, but its drawback is that you cannot instigate a
challenge unless the bell has been activated. You would
be surprised at the number of nutters who bash on the
door and you cannot answer them as you cannot activate
the intercom from the remote unit!

"Another John" wrote in message
...
Any views or advice on this, please:

We have a wireless doorbell: bells (2) plugged into the mains, and the
bellpush fixed to the outside of our porch.

I'm now finally fed up of the bellpush failing spasmodically -- Damp?
Cold? Battery failed? -- any and all of these causes have been
identified, and fixed, over the years.

Whenever it fails (due to cold and/or damp anyway), it usually corrects
itself .... so we never know when the bellpush is going to work, or not.

And so I've resolved to get a mains-wired bell instead (with the
approved transformer).


I'm looking for advice on drilling through the porch (door upright) -
it's UPVC, with a steel frame, of course.

And also any hints (make of doorbell, fitting transformer ... anything?)
would be much appreciated!

Cheers
John