The Thames Doorbell

[squirmelia]

I wired up the doorbell I found on the foreshore so that when you press it, it plays sounds of the River Thames I recorded from the foreshore.

Video on Flickr:

Comments

[iguana]

Love this idea! What's it connected to that does the button action?

[squirmelia]

Trickery!

The button still presses in but everything else had rusted away.. so it's just pressing down on some coiled up wire acting like a spring, which is then pressing down on some card I painted with conductive paint and that has a crocodile clip connecting it to a microcontroller that is hooked up to a speaker.

If I was going to make it more robust, I think a lever microswitch would be the way to go.

[iguana]

Ah that's cool. I've got a similar project that I want to do at some point (button lights up some LED, then a sound plays) so that's good info 😁. Which microcontroller are you using? I've got a micropython board somewhere I need to dig out…

[squirmelia]

I'm using the Bare Conductive Touch Board, as that makes it really simple to hook something up to make a sound.