Twine on my door bell?

Answers

• 10 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
• Bill Spencer

  December 2012 Vote Up1Vote Down

  Here's an idea for attaching twine to a doorbell. First, get a small LED or light bulb that will work on your doorbell's voltage, and connect it in parallel to the bell/chime so that it lights up whenever the button is pressed.
  
  Assuming you have either the breakout board or the moisture sensor, you can connect a simple light sensor to it. Place the light sensor and the twine sensor in close proximity to each other, perhaps even in a small box to eliminate other light. When the light bulb comes on the light sensor will show a closed circuit to the twine sensor, and your rule will see either "closed" or "wet". Use that to send a message or interface to IFTTT, etc.
• Ben Clark

  December 2012 Vote Up0Vote Down

  You should be able to do it using the break out board.
  
  They recently posted on their twine/supermechanical blog about how to use it.
  http://supermechanical.tumblr.com/post/36761040622/how-to-use-your-twine-breakout-board
• John Kestner

  December 2012 Vote Up0Vote Down

  Please note that you should NOT connect more than 3.3V to the breakout board directly. Doorbells are typically 24V. This will destroy your Twine. As suggested in our how-to, you can use a relay to keep the doorbell electrically separate from the Twine.
• Matthew Chiavelli

  December 2012 Vote Up0Vote Down

  I've never used a relay in an electronic project. What type would you recommend for this use? My house's doorbell is 16V. This seems a lot simpler than attaching a piezo element to one of the chimes, which was my current plan.
• Bert Veldman

  December 2012 Vote Up0Vote Down

  In addition to this I am thinking of activating a webcam when the doorbell rings and send me a message to check the cam. The cam will be connected to my server and store the pictures to be used in case a burgler first checks if someone is at home.
• Philip Graham

  December 2012 Vote Up0Vote Down

  I have not connected this to Twine, but I have used this with my home automation system to detect the doorbell.
  
  ELK-930
  http://www.elkproducts.com/product-catalog/elk-930-doorbell-and-telephone-ring-detector
  
• Robert Savage

  January 2013 Vote Up0Vote Down

  If you are still interested, I can do a write up on this project with a HOW-TO attach Twine to your doorbell system. @ http://www.twineprojects.com/
  
  I'll cover how to simply use a relay (or other electronic components) to interface with the Twine's breakout board.
  
  Let me know :-)
  Thanks, Robert
• Matthew Chiavelli

  January 2013 edited January 2013 Vote Up0Vote Down

  Robert - thanks for the offer. I actually used a transistor and replicated the circuit here: http://supermechanical.tumblr.com/post/36761040622/how-to-use-your-twine-breakout-board and got everything working great. I'm using Prowl for notifications, along with the SMS option. I've found that sometimes I get both notifications, sometimes just one and occasionally neither. Fingers crossed we get an IFTTT channel soon, since that works great with push notifications apps like Boxcar.
• Robert Savage

  January 2013 Vote Up0Vote Down

  The transistor or maybe an optoisolator was the way I was going to go. I still may do this as a project as it may help others and would be a fun use of Twine.
  
  Thanks, Robert