Comment by dboreham

I've seen this headline floating in my feed for a while and assumed it was about some place called Portobello in North Carolina or similar. But having discovered it's about the real Portobello...down the rabbit hole...

At first I thought the bell chime controller was a hobby project. Long ago there were many electronics firms in the Edinburgh area so someone who worked as an EE could easily have knocked up the controller using "appropriated" parts from work. But the soldering is not quite right. It's too good for a total beginner, but not good enough for a professional. Also the single chip I think implies an MCU of some sort, so it's not going to be more than about 30 years old. A date code from the chip would be nice.

Then I realized that "box to control church bells" is probably a thing and a quick Google search dragged up this: https://www.electronics-lab.com/project/church-bell-controll... note that the PCB in the 5th picture bears a more than passing resemblance to the one at Porty.

Fun fact: my Dad's mother's family ran a shop on the High Street in the late 1800's. The building is still there and is on the next block down the road from the police station.