I just obtained an old rotary phone at a garage sale. I am working on hooking it up to an arduino project, and I was able to get the dial and hook switches figured out pretty easily. I cannot really figure out how the ringer works, or how to wire it up.
It is an old western electric C4A ringer. It has two bells and a striker arm between them. There is a coil, and some magnetic plates that move the ringer, with four wires going into the coil. I have found schematics online for how the thing connects to the other phone components for normal operation, but I really just wanna figure out how to make the thing ring on its own.
I read that most phone lines run in the vicinity of 90 volts ac. Is there any possibility I can make this thing ring with a 12 volt wall wart, or am I gonna need a full 120 line and a relay or something?
Best Answer
Look at page 2 and 3 of the schematic .pdf from this page. Sparkfun have done it using an H-bridge and voltage booster circuit. Quite nifty really.