Spore Operations During COVID-19 Outbreak
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Black Doorbells and Chimes: a Primer
Do I Need a Transformer for my Doorbell?
We get a lot of questions about doorbell transformers! Here we will attempt to answer the most common of them.
What is a doorbell transformer?
A transformer converts line-voltage to low-voltage (16 volts). In the United States, line-voltage 120 for most household wiring (this is what is running to your lights and outlets). In Europe and other parts of the world, line-voltage is 240. Any transformer that converts line-voltage to low-voltage will work as a doorbell transformer.
On Repair: A Story of a Broken Doorbell Button
Installing Spore's RING chime with Nest and Ring video doorbells
Show On: Spore at Dwell on Design
It's been too long since Spore has made an appearance at a trade show, but we packed up and went to Los Angeles last month for the Dwell on Design show. The weekend was wonderful and we got great response from everyone who came by. We were excited to be there and hope to make a habit of it.
We were excited to introduce our products to many people who were unfamiliar with us, but we were especially pleased to meet customers who have been familiar with us for years--one even has their original Square doorbell from when we got our start 15 years ago (and it's still illuminated, passing the 100,000 hour rating of our LEDS!).
You may notice the handsome orange chime on the display: we debuted our newest addition to our line, which we are calling Big Ring (6" diameter compared to our regular Ring's 4.25"). This chime has such a handsome deep sound. We are experimenting with finishes still, but we are very excited by this orange, which will be in the final lineup. Look for Big Ring for sale this fall.
While we were out and about on our off hours in Los Angeles, we enjoyed driving around the hills and eating tacos, hitting the Getty Center and Griffith Park Observatory for consecutive sunsets (and we appreciated that coffee in Los Angeles has caught up to Seattle since our last visit).
For Ted, though, the highlight seemed to be this Citroen DS. Thanks, L.A. We will be back soon.
The future of urban density
We at Spore are essentially suburban. In spite of our living in and loving our city, we live in a single-family dwelling that has enough room that we can store things we don't mean to keep. We admire the minimalism borne of constraints, and we love what density can do for community vibrancy, as well as for environmental impact. Cities in the United States tend to have codes that prevent developers from building the kind of compact dwellings that are popular in many Asian cities, but some people are starting to explore the "what-ifs." What if there were a viable option for affordable, safe housing for the young and poor in our cities? What if semi-communal options were architectually supported? Today we read this interesting article in the New York Times on a few projects that are considering this, and we were inspired by the idea that we might see something like this in our cities in the next decade. We just hope, of course, that they want lots of doorbells.
As seen on Decorgirl.net
Thanks to Lisa at Decorgirl.net for the great Spore review earlier this year on Decorgirl.net. Don't forget to let us know if you ever blog about us--we'd love to share your post with our customers.
A House by the Park: the cost of building modern
A couple of years ago, we began following the blog A House By The Park, the chronology of Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, on the building of his modern house in Seattle. His goal in writing his blog was not to just show off the progress on his beautiful home, but to precisely document the design choices and their costs so that other people could see what the reality of building custom modern might actually look like. The journey started in 2007, when Mike first started thinking about what he was looking for. In July of 2008 he found his dream property and the process began in earnest. Working with Build, a local construction firm that specialize in modern residences, Mike transformed a property with an early 1950s house into a modern masterpiece.
Along the way he shared his experiences and choices on everything from mortgages to lighting, with information about how he made his decisions along the way. We were pleased as punch that in his second to last post on the process he called out our True doorbell as a favorite find, a great honor after watching his progress for a year. Though the house wrapped up in November of last year, the blog remains an incredible resource and inspiration for anyone who is thinking about building or revamping modern.
