3 ms·

I like your idea of putting everything inside the bell. I wonder if you could replace the solenoid with just an electric magnet that would pull down the button

I like your idea of putting everything inside the bell. I wonder if you could replace the solenoid with just an electric magnet that would pull down the button from inside. Totally unrelated, I have one project that I keep thinking about starting every time I turn on my monitor in the morning... I want to connect an RPi Zero to the serial port on my monitor, so that instead of pressing multiple buttons to change the input or color profiles (for day vs night), I could hit a dedicated set of buttons instead. One physical button might issue multiple commands over serial to the monitor. I'm thinking of doing this with a Raspberry Pi simply for convenience... I'm sure someone here will suggest doing it with something much smaller, and they'd probably be right.

SamBam 6y ago
Or replace it with a single spin of a motor (inside or outside the bell) that had a small ringer on a spring. Simple motors are even more plentiful, at least in my random-electronics-stuff drawer.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Look into DDC; a lot of monitors can be controlled through that and it doesn't require any extra hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel
- _Microft 6y ago
  There is a tool called "Click Monitor DDC" that can control a lot of display settings via DDC. It warns that changing settings too often would wear out a display's flash memory used for storing the settings. This shouldn't be limited to changing settings via DDC but automated setting changes might occur lots of times more often than manual changes.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    How is changing the setting from DDC different from changing it manually through the monitor's buttons? I think the warning is there for programmatic usage to warn people against changing the settings in a while loop or similar, but changing at a reasonable rate shouldn't be a problem.

SamBam 6y ago

Or replace it with a single spin of a motor (inside or outside the bell) that had a small ringer on a spring. Simple motors are even more plentiful, at least in my random-electronics-stuff drawer.

Nextgrid 6y ago

Look into DDC; a lot of monitors can be controlled through that and it doesn't require any extra hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

_Microft 6y ago
There is a tool called "Click Monitor DDC" that can control a lot of display settings via DDC. It warns that changing settings too often would wear out a display's flash memory used for storing the settings. This shouldn't be limited to changing settings via DDC but automated setting changes might occur lots of times more often than manual changes.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  How is changing the setting from DDC different from changing it manually through the monitor's buttons? I think the warning is there for programmatic usage to warn people against changing the settings in a while loop or similar, but changing at a reasonable rate shouldn't be a problem.