Over 10 years we help companies reach their financial and branding goals. Engitech is a values-driven technology agency dedicated.

Gallery

Contacts

411 University St, Seattle, USA

+1 -800-456-478-23

Case Studies
Voicebell: Programmable Doorbell

Voicebell: Programmable Doorbell

Solid and smart

Before the programmable doorbell, your average doorbell appeared to be a pretty simple machine. They had a switch, an annunciator, and a chime and perhaps a window for displaying a name card. There could be a dial manually set to identify an occupant’s expected return time, or a tiny lamp to illuminate the device. 

A two-way switch powered the device. Then came musical chimes connected to a clock for annunciating the time and read-only memory stored with several tunes.

The problem is that doorbells often lacked enough power to do much more than the basics — typically from the electricity flowing between two wires typically found where the doorbell is. A client approached MTSI with an idea that was ahead of its time — a patented, programmable and low-cost doorbell including a control for connection in series with an existing push button in a residential circuit — that could do more with those existing cables.

Voicebell: Programmable Doorbell
Voicebell: Programmable Doorbell
Solution

For Voicebell (U.S. Patent #US-5210520-A) we utilized a digital record/playback circuit to record an audible announcement as digital signals. When a visitor pressed the doorbell, they’d hear a neighborly greeting from the occupant converted from analog signals spoken into a microphone, converted to digital, and stored in the integrated circuit memory.

The charming trick was in programming the device switches to cycle between the ring and audio playback without exceeding the power requirement — and miniaturizing the circuit board and installing the device in its weather-resistant housing.