Smart Church Bell Control via the Internet of Things

smartcustos, a startup based in Hofheim near Frankfurt, has developed a smart IoT solution that enables small parishes to ring their church bells remotely.

An interesting story and a good idea sometimes coincide happily to create a new business model – as in the case of the IoT church bell control system devised by smartcustos. The story is that in Rohr, a small parish in the southwest of Thuringia, an elderly lady walked to the churchyard daily in all weathers to start the bells ringing for services, baptisms, weddings and funerals. She then walked home, only to return shortly afterwards to end the ringing. Kai Kerwel, head of IT at corosys, a Hesse-based engineering firm, heard the story and had a brainwave. What was needed was a remote church bell control system.

Kerwel and colleagues founded in Hofheim am Taunus, where corosys is based, the startup smartcustos (custos is Latin for sexton or custodian) and developed a smart IoT control device. The way it works is that peals are programmed in the device to start and stop individual bells ringing at specified times. The times are set by a PC or smartphone using a digital calendar. So the bells automatically start and stop ringing punctually in the required sequence without anyone needing to go to the church. “The large bell founders’ proprietary control systems are often complicated and expensive,” Kerwel says. “Our simple solution is explicitly designed with smaller parishes in mind.”

For pastors, sextons or volunteer helpers the smart solution takes care of the bell ringer’s time-consuming task. That makes life much easier at a time when pastorates are increasingly being reduced in number and parishes are merged so that church personnel often have to look after several churches. Times for bell ringing can be set or changed spontaneously. If the pastor has to hold a Saturday funeral at short notice, he will note the date and time in his online calendar and the system will program the right peal of bells automatically.

All you need is to connect the IoT box via Telekom’s cellular network. No installation, wiring or special software is required. The device needs only to be coupled once with any calendar app. “After five minutes of instruction anyone can operate the controls without difficulty. All you need to do is note a date and time in your calendar,” CEO Kerwel says.

Smartcustos offers churches further benefits. The box includes a set of sensors. They can be placed inside the church, by the organ or at the entrance to measure temperature and humidity. The cellular module with its Telekom IoT SIM card in the control device transmits this data automatically to the smartcustos cloud, where the church personnel can access it. The church can then be heated and ventilated more precisely, cutting energy costs and providing important ambient data for works of art or the sensitive organ. In addition, smartcustos is planning to develop a smart heating control system to automate yet another process. The church could then be heated precisely before each service.

“Telekom employees have contributed many ideas,” Kerwel says. The startup is looking into additional uses. “We can control the tower clock, including the summer and winter time changeover. We could also install disaster alarm sirens on the church roof and connect them with our Adiutor. Siren masts have been decommissioned on a large scale in recent decades but every village still has a church.”