It might sound silly, but connecting your doorbell to the internet is a great idea. At a basic level, it means that whenever someone presses your doorbell, your smartphone or tablet will chime so you’ll never miss a delivery or visitor, whether you’re down the bottom of the garden or listening to loud music in your study. You’ll also be able to log doorbell presses, so you can prove that the courier you’ve waited for all day really did just stick the “sorry you were out” card through the letterbox without even trying the bell.
To connect your doorbell to your network (and the internet beyond), you’ll need a Raspberry Pi and a Class 4 (or faster) 4GB SD card with the latest version of Raspbian installed. You’ll also need a power supply and an internet connection for the Pi, as well as all the doorbell-specific hardware we’ve listed below.
Rugged Metal Pushbutton with White LED Ring – 16mm White Momentary: These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged and look real good while doing it! Simply drill a 16mm hole into any material up to 1/2″ thick and you can fit these in place, there’s even a rubber gasket to keep water out of the enclosure. On the front of the button is a flat metal actuator, surrounded by a white plastic LED ring. On the back there are 3 contacts for the button (common, normally-open and normally-closed) and 2 for the white LED ring (+ and -). Connect 3 to 6V to the LED to have it light up nicely, there’s a built in resistor! If you want to use this with a higher voltage, say 12V or 24V, simply add a 470 ohm resistor in series with the LED connection to keep the LED current at around 20mA. Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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