need guidance building a LED light Box for nursing home

[mimbari]

The cheapest company wants to charge these poor people $2500 to install 7 boxes for this nursing home so old people can press a button if they need help.

All I need to do for them (and I am doing it for free) is build a box with 2 or better 1 button/s that signals a light and buzzes an anoying little tone to alert a nurse. The other button to cancel the alarm.

I figure a LED light some resistors, a pizzy speaker, a little box that can take a board and 2 rechargable AA batteries should do it.

Because I havnt done anything like this for a Long long time it would be greatly appreciated if anyone could help me help the old people out.

Thanks in advance.

 

[evandude]

you can get latching relays. I haven't looked into them much but i imagine it would be very simple to have one button to trip the relay(alert), and one button to shut it off. (cancel)

 

[hotwaterwizard]

Here are my thoughts.
A master Control box for the Nurse Station.
This box has a push button and a light for each room.
Above each Door is a flashing light
When the button at the Nurses Station is pushed it does not stop that light.
It just stops the buzzer.
If another Room Pushes their button the buzzer will sound again.
If all of them push the button then all of the switches will have to be pushed to shut off the buzzer
The only way to stop the light is to go into the room and push a button that stops the light from flashing.
In Each Room there will be 2 buttons. One for set and one for reset and a flashing light so the patient can know the button was pushed.

 

[hotwaterwizard]

Here are some circuits you can combine.

 

[Dialtone]

Here is a quick shot using IC's. I did not verify all, but should work.
Possibly someone else can contribute a 555 driver oscillator for the piezo
buzzer portion. You would get better range on the room signal leads if
you upped the supply voltage to 9VDC.
Edit..I think I may have the alert signal state wrong in the schematic.

 

[mimbari]

Thanks for the help so far, the controller board is a bit complicated for what I need and my budget is like 300.00 though this is a great idea all the same.

I didnt realise how much research I would have to do put such a simple application together.

Cheers for the help thee will be many happy people once I can get this working.

 

[Exo]

Here is a quick shot using IC's. I did not verify all, but should work.
Possibly someone else can contribute a 555 driver oscillator for the piezo
buzzer portion. You would get better range on the room signal leads if
you upped the supply voltage to 9VDC.
Edit..I think I may have the alert signal state wrong in the schematic.

You'll need pullup's for those switches and driving led's directly from a 40-series might not work ( depends if the chip is in the mood or not :lol: )

 

[jbeng]

Here's a latching relay circuit like the one Hotwaterwizard described.
You can use any DPDT relay for this, as long as your battery (BT1) can provide enough current to actuate the relay. Press switch S1 to activate the relay, press S2 to de-activate it. Use the second set of contacts in the relay to operate your lights, buzzer, etc. You could probably build a circuit like this and put it in an enclosure for $10-15 US each.
I'd probably use a 9v battery (maybe even a 9v lithium) instead of the rechargeables, they would probably turn out to be a maintenance headache. 9v lithiums are about $10 US each though.

 

[bmcculla]

Radio shack sells wireless doorbells that do almost exactly what you're asking. I think you can set the individual doorbell buttons to cause a different doorbell tone for each button. You could detect the tone with a microcontroller and light the appropreate LED for that button. Might not be an ideal solution but it would be cheap and easy to install.

 

[hotwaterwizard]

Here is another one.

 

[GraveYard_Killer]

or you can use a silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) to latch those relays

 

[mimbari]

Thank you so much for your help on this. The latching relay is such a nice simple and effective solution for my requirments. Whats more, this has porobably saved me a load of headaches and time.

I will be sure to tell the old folks that a bunch of nice people helped me out with this on the the net.

Cheers

 

[hotwaterwizard]

Here is what I came up with. You will Reuse the Power supply and repeat the rest as needed.

 

[hotwaterwizard]

I expanded it to 4 rooms.

 

[mimbari]

using an FRS1 Dc 6V 1A/125VAC -

John DeRosa (Hotwaterwizard)

I am using the latching relay circuit you suggested and to shrink the application down in size and power requirments I have substituted the 12V auto cube relay for a n FRS1 but I cannot find for the life of me what the equivilent pins are on the FRS1 to the 12v cube relay.


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If anyone can point me in the right direction I would ver much appreciate it..

Thanks

 

[hotwaterwizard]

You won't use 87a.

DATASHEET
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2004/11/frs1.pdf

**broken link removed**

 

[hotwaterwizard]

Just incase you can't open the Datasheet Here is a copy in a different format.

 

[mimbari]

I cant thank you enough

Hopefuly after some time I can give to others as you have for me here.

Thanks again, this forum's a great place to learn about electronics and the help from users is 2nd to none.

Cheers