wiring a digital clock to a small battery motor!?

What are you trying to achieve? An adjustable clock? A sped-up clock?

Most clocks nowadays already have a simple electric motor inside that is driven by alternating positive and negative pulses of current, half a revolution per pulse. You can feed in your own pulses and run one at a variety of speeds right down to zero RPM, and possibly up to 10 times normal. If you want to install another motor your task is largely a mechanical one, which you can solve yourself by destroying a clock or two. IKEA sells them for under $3.

-- Joe

I believe there are universal time delay relay modules used for industrial control. They can have nice digital displays. Check Ebay or search using key phrase "time delay relay". D from BC

Telling us why may help.

You can get battery-driven clocks with quartz mechanical movements that ring a real bell -- with a motor. If the motor's big enough for your needs you can just rip it out of the clock and extend the wires.

There are little boxes in the garden supplies aisle that operate a motorized valve for watering plants; two AA cells operate the internal clock and its motor. Do you want something like that?

How important is the clock display?

hi again,

thanks so much for the replies.

This is going to sound odd, but this is a little mad pet project I have in mind. I want to make a "revolutionary" surefire alarm clock. me, and a lot of people dont get up with the alarm, Even if its away. So i hope to achieve some sort of system which makes sure i get up. Like maybe squirt water, or drop something on me.

The time delay relay sounds good? I found this:

But one of the requirements itself is a relay? I guess i have to find out exactly what one of those are!

Or is there any other timed device i can build/salvage?

Thanks Tim, I found out i have two clocks that run on a motor. I dont think thats going to be easy, but i'll still try to take them apart and check if i could do what i want with them.

I do have another alternative, i can write a C# program that sends an electric current through the parallel port,But i'm not sure if its strong enough to run motor.(The motors that run on a 1.2 - 1.5v battery) Maybe i could hook it up to a transistor? But then i would have to have my pc on all night! =S

Gideon

sitck a microswitch behind the bell winder of a clockwork alarm clock.

Bye. Jasen

Use a quartz clock with piezo beeper alarm and detect the voltage to the beeper with a Darlington transistor - then you need a latch to keep the motor on or timer to turn it off.

Or like someone suggested hack into one of those $20 on the faucet garden sprinkler timers and replace the solenoid coil with your motor or small relay for your motor - or just use a water wheel.

giddy wrote in news:1184505721.587409.249030 @z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com:

2: learn or figure out how to get logic from an alorm clock. A typical travel type alarm clock (analog or digital) will be relatively easy, just tap into the buzzer circuit.

You don't want that circuit because it's a 555, which is not a precision timer and doesn't work reliabley over about a minute anyway.

Just get an ordinary digital clock radio, open it up and find the two leads to the piezo element. The black one will be supply negative, and the red one goes to the circuit that makes the "beep, beep, beep" of the normal alarm.

Buy a 1 uF plastic (non-polar) capacitor, a 10K resistor, and an SCR.

Put the battery, motor, and SCR in a series circuit, with the battery negative to the SCR cathode - connect that point to the black wire to the piezo.

Then, connect the 10K resistor from the cathode to the gate of the SCR, and the 1 uF cap from the gate to the red lead of the piezo.

When the clock's alarm goes off, the pulse to the piezo fires the SCR, and you can control anything you want to.

You will have to remove power to turn it off.

Have Fun! Rich

You could do a search on line on how to build a bomb controlled by a digital clock and then modify the design to run the motor.

How often does the motor have to run? For what duration?

If you need a time delay, you could write a small program that runs on Windows which will hold a relay connected to the parallel port open. This will run until Windows halts on a BSOD, at which time the relay closes and the motor runs. Don't use this if the motor is a part of a hazardous process, as you might not have sufficient time to get clear of the PC before Windows hangs. ;-)

Hi Gideon,

I had the same problem, but tried to solve it another way. My wife's sleep is very sensitive, so not only I have to use some strong alarm to wake myself up, it needs to be absolutely quiet and motionless. So no motors, sprinkling water or firing guns allowed.

After a long thought I came to a creative solution: I cold use a kind of weak electric shocker (don't panic, I mean a VERY weak one). A little investigation helped me to figure out that there's some kind of "loose-weight-without-doing-exercises" device that trigger your muscles, giving you weak but noticeable impulse. This looks like a butterfly, was sold on TV shop channels and was claimed to burn excessive fat. AFAIR, it does not have real clock, but does have a timer which can be set to turn it on after any interval, from 15 min to a day, cause it's supposed to be attached to body under the clothes and work automatically with a given interval.

If you are not afraid of being waked up by an electric impulse, this will SURELY wake you up fast, no matter how weak the impulse is. Looks to me much safer than having motors near your bed while sleeping. In any case you can weaken the impulse even more by replacing the biggest capasitor inside the device with less uF one.

-- Leon