Meeting timer

Feb 11, 2009 12 Replies

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yan 17 years ago

I imagine someone has thought of this by now, but I can't find one for sale...

I need a meeting timer. Basically an egg timer where I can set the time for 1 to 5 minutes, and with a green LED for "OK to talk" and a red LED and buzzer for "Shut up, your time is up." Bonus points for a drag strip christmas tree type LED display, where multiple LEDs light up or turn off as your time expires.

It has to be small enough to pass around at a meeting, and should have a "slap to set" switch; no fiddling required.

Thus:

Joe starts off, he slaps the timer to get it going and hands it to the next person. When that person's time runs out, s/he slaps the timer and passes it on.

And so on and so forth.

Ideas?

--Yan

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John Fields 17 years ago

555 running a 5 minute down-counter with 1 minute taps decoded, latched and sent to the 5 LEDs; red, orange, yellow, green, blue. When the thing times out the red LED will come on and the buzzer will buzz until the START button is pressed, whereupon the blue LED will come on, the buzzer will stop buzzing and a new 5 minute period will start. Want a schematic? JF

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yan 17 years ago

That would be awesome!

Could the time interval be set (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 minutes?)

--Yan

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Rich Grise 17 years ago

You're not shopping at the right stores. Grocery stores and "Drug" stores sell these in the cookware section.

Admittedly, not with all of the bells and whistles, but they do give an audible beep at the end of the interval.

Good Luck! Rich

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a7yvm109gf5d1 17 years ago

Check your cell phone's apps.

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yan 17 years ago

I need something that's visible in a room of 20 people. I want to keep the windbags quiet! :-)

All kidding aside, I intend to use this to keep meetings down to a reasonable time by passing a token which happens to be a timer.

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John Fields 17 years ago

Yup. JF

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Rich Grise 17 years ago

Just put this on your laptop:

formatting link

Cheers! Rich

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D from BC 17 years ago

I can mail a PCB and coded microcontroller for $800.00 Can.

D from BC myrealaddress(at)comic(dot)com BC, Canada Posted to usenet sci.electronics.design

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Paul Hovnanian P.E. 17 years ago

Better idea: Go with the LEDs, but replace the buzzer with an audio playback chip and some memory. Load a recording of the music they play at the Oscars when the winners' speeches go long.

;-)

Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Free the Mallocs!

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John Fields 17 years ago

The schematic is posted here: news:nlu8p4dn8rs3rho2i567t2stb6ul1q5vm2@4ax.com JF

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Jim Thompson 17 years ago

In Scouts it's called a talking stick... only the holder of the stick can talk.

...Jim Thompson

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bw 17 years ago

Holy Chips, Batman, thats not bad for one days work. I'll bet you could see a few on eBay.

I bread boarded at 10 minute timer for myself a couple years ago. My design was

555 to 7490 to 7447 to 7segment

Note that the OP "might" be happier with a large darkroom timer

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