LEDs powed off the phone line

I was looking around the net and saw this
http://contents.fifthunit.com/html/products.5th/sku.777.html

So I came up with this.

2 LEDs one wired one way the other the other way, and a 10 K ohm resistor. I put it on the phone line and and it worked. Keep it running for a few hours and made sure the phone keep working.

After that I bought a 50 K pot and multi meter and started messing around. It turnes out that the one LED lights all the time but not too bright. Real dim if one picks the phone up. It only take around 2 ma of current. If I moved the pot around it would work down around 5K ohm and pull about 5 ma. If I went too low it started simulating a phone was off the hook. Also I had someone call me and both LEDs blinked. This must be the AC that cases the phone to ring.

Anyone else try this or see it?

Thanks

Just a bump

ken2400 said:

2 LEDs one wired one way the other the other way, and a 10 K ohm resistor.

Click to expand...

theres been many threads on the phone line led now...um...

Im curious, can you redefine what you said there....did you hook up the led and the resistors in a linear fashion, or did you run them side by side?

Watch out for that ring signal...it can give you a strong enough shock to stun (or kill, under the worst circumstances). It's nominally 70VAC 40Hz at significant amperage.

It might also not be good for LEDs.

I did read the thread about the phone 8 LED light but no one said they bought it.

I did a few different things.

1. Two LEDs and a 10 K resister like this

red wire (---- + - -------10K --) green wire
- +

The two leds share the same phone line and resistor. They opp each other so they can take the AC form the phone ringing.

Illum_the_nation said:

theres been many threads on the phone line led now...um...

Im curious, can you redefine what you said there....did you hook up the led and the resistors in a linear fashion, or did you run them side by side?

Click to expand...

Good to note this wholeflaffer. I do not play with the wires when it is pluged into the phone line only when it is unpluged. I treat it like AC from the wall outlet.

wholeflaffer said:

Watch out for that ring signal...it can give you a strong enough shock to stun (or kill, under the worst circumstances). It's nominally 70VAC 40Hz at significant amperage.

It might also not be good for LEDs.

Click to expand...

The way phone companies charge us nowadays its good to get a little something back

TORCH_BOY said:

The way phone companies charge us nowadays its good to get a little something back

Click to expand...

Nowadays? (snipped offtopic stuff)

edit - sorry, upon re-reading this, I realize I am taking this way off topic. Message severely truncated.

There's an FCC regulation somewhere that says that you must present a 5Meg ohm load to the phone line. 10k is too big of a load if you want to comply with this.