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Hey all. I have an old rotary telephone that I've been taking apart to repurpose for other projects but I was looking at the ringer on the phone and was wondering if I could hook it up to battery supply with an on off switch and a temporary on button to make it ring.

Is that possible? Any ideas on the amount of batteries needed? I always thought the old phones ran on a low voltage power supply but I really don't know shit or if this will work.

Ringers want 70-90 volts AC.

crochambeau wrote:Ringers want 70-90 volts AC.

sweet jesus. so if I take apart this old ass phone and want to wire up the ringer to a battery and an on/off switch it would require 70-90 volts?

It was designed for 70-90 volts AC. Lower voltages may move the clapper..

If you're using a battery the clapper will only move toward one of the bells, you need AC to swing it back and forth.

crochambeau wrote:It was designed for 70-90 volts AC. Lower voltages may move the clapper..

If you're using a battery the clapper will only move toward one of the bells, you need AC to swing it back and forth.

Damn, I always thought that this was a low voltage device that ran off of those 4 tiny wires. That's a bummer.

DC supply of -48 if memory serves, then the ringer is AC on top of that.

Not terribly low voltage, remember, back on the day this stuff traveled miles of wire.

you can do it with a battery or low voltage dc supply if it can push enough current. i did this for someone with an arduino and a transformer. the frequency needs to be ~18 HZ iirc, that is what they were designed for. I think in the end i had it working with only ~ 40VAC but ymmv.

Basically use the dc to power an oscilator (AC signal) then drive the AC through a step up transformer. Attach the other side of the transformer to the clapper.

Just pull a Schumann and run the whole device off an AC power supply, with an overcomplicated rectification circuit and a bunch of extra parts. That's metal.
-Brett

thanks for the info (most of which I didn't understand. I think I'm going to get a battery power alarm clock and take it apart and wire up the ringer.

you could also just find/get an Coil style doorbell, same idea as a tattoo machine, they run on DC less than 12V


http://www.mansionschools.com/electric- ... gK2m_D_BwE