Servant Bell Board

[Nick Mace]

2 hours ago, Hemsley said:

Nice work, I too like the way you’ve brought a modern interface to this. I’ve not made much progress with mine, too many other projects on the go!

I was the same. It was getting my son interested in it which made it happen. He now has plans to add arduinos to most appliances in the house!

[Bernard]

We've just bought an old house with an antique servant's bell board in it, which I also plan on restoring for requesting beer. 

 

The box is very similar to this one here, with just 4 numbers:

 

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-oak-edwards-1872-four-number-291708587

 

The inside looks a little like this, where the numbers can swing up. Seems to be an Edwards Annunciator:

 

http://ancientpoint.com/imgs/a/i/c/s/y/antique_1872_dixie_edwards_annunciator_butler_servants_victorian_signal_call_box_7_lgw.jpg

 

The house has over a dozen buttons throughout it - so would anyone have any idea how this system worked? Where will people know to bring me my beer with these 4 numbers?

 

 

 

 

[Nick Mace]

I’m not sure how that would have worked. Perhaps the house was divided into 4 “zones” so the butler would know roughly where to go when summoned?

 

Is yours still installed and wired up?

 

We’re starting the process of getting our kitchen redone and we’ve found where our board was originally installed. Taking some shelves off a wall revealed the original wiring for the bell board. The wiring is long past its sell by date but we might consider putting the bird back in the same place (although it would be partly behind a door so needs some thinking about).

[Richard (OldStager)]

all this reminds me of the nurse call systems i used to fit in nursing / care homes back in the day, the oldest of which had just 4 or so main lamps on a board and that told you what area of the property to head for, once in that area you simply looked for which ever lamp was lit above the doors. the more modern ones were on a per room basis as far as main displays go and just as i stopped working the analogue addressable ones were just being sold.

[Bernard]

Ha - that sounds great. I'm starting to run with your zone theory, I can't think of any other way it would have worked. Yes it was installed and about a third of the buttons around the house still worked. I have my low voltage guy restoring it, we'll see what he comes up with when he cleans it all up. 

[Katherine]

On 12/02/2021 at 13:14, Nick Mace said:

I eventually got round to sorting this out.  Here's what I did:

 

I made a wooden box to house the electronics behind the bellboard (I've been getting into woodworking over the last 18 months so it was good to use some of the skills I've learned including hand cut dovetails no less!):

 

 

 

I then made a flat board to fit to the wall and which would also have room for a bell.  The box was fitted to that with hinges:

 

 

 

I routed channels in the back for some wiring:

 

 

My son really came up with most of the ideas for the electronics.  The basic idea was a wifi enabled arduino which would trigger relays to operate the magnets on the bellboard.  It would all be powered with 12v.  This is what we ended up with:

 

 

 

 

The final set up looks like this.

 

 

When you fire it up, the arduino connects to the wifi.  You find its IP address and put that into any web browser connected to the same network and you get this:

 

 

Press a button and, hey presto, the corresponding flag moves on the bellboard and the bell rings!  The buttons reset after a second or so.  We found the code for this on the web, but my son modified the html part of it to add the labels etc.  All of the bellboard flags work (with the exception of the front door, which we want to operate with a remote switch).

 

We’ve got a couple of other things we’d like to do with it.  One is to get the front doorbell to work on it which will require some kind of remote switch.  The other is that there are still some wall buttons in a couple of rooms and I’d really like to get those working with a remote switch.

 

 

[Katherine]

This is so clever. I just bid for and won a billboard at auction. It's just like yours - 8 flags but no visible bell. I have no idea who to ask who might update the wiring, add a bell and link it to my front and back door for me. If anyone on this forum is prepared to repair it for me, I would be interested to hear from you. 

[Captain Colonial]

Now we just need servants.  (It was rumoured when I was ClubChair that I had minions to do my bidding, but that wasn’t true.)