Sliders Timer WIP

I don't know the specs of your circuit that you have made there, but I was thinking about using a portable phone charging bank, perhaps ripping the guts out of it and sticking it into the MicroTac battery compartment.

Something like this would work

This puts out 5v and makes the timer easily rechargeable.

I haven't installed the charging pack into the case or anything, but I have one that supplies constant 5v power and can run the first circuit board that I made pretty well, so this is what I'm probably going to end up doing.

I have the 3rd iteration of my original timer board on its way to me right now, so it looks like my journey is about to come to an end, as far as the original timer is concerned. Then onto the other versions.
 
brevik said:
I don't know the specs of your circuit that you have made there, but I was thinking about using a portable phone charging bank, perhaps ripping the guts out of it and sticking it into the MicroTac battery compartment.

Something like this would work

This puts out 5v and makes the timer easily rechargeable.

I haven't installed the charging pack into the case or anything, but I have one that supplies constant 5v power and can run the first circuit board that I made pretty well, so this is what I'm probably going to end up doing.

I have the 3rd iteration of my original timer board on its way to me right now, so it looks like my journey is about to come to an end, as far as the original timer is concerned. Then onto the other versions.
Click to expand...

Yeah... That would be ideal but I can't find any small enough. I'm probably going to use a smartphone battery. It doesn't need 5v and can run off 3.7+.
 
A print shop should be able to print that directly onto an acrylic sheet. I should have included a mirrored version of the pdf files to make it easier. However, if you go to a print shop you can tell them that you want it printed mirrored usually. You will want the printing to be done on the underside of the sheet so as to not scratch the printed material.
 
brevik said:
A print shop should be able to print that directly onto an acrylic sheet. I should have included a mirrored version of the pdf files to make it easier. However, if you go to a print shop you can tell them that you want it printed mirrored usually. You will want the printing to be done on the underside of the sheet so as to not scratch the printed material.
Click to expand...

Oh. Good idea. I actually was having trouble with the ink rubbing off. I ended up spraying it with clear coat to help with that. Thanks for making these files.
 
I was able to get that charging bank apart today and stuck it in a hollowed out MicroTac battery.

20170525_183815_HDR.jpg20170525_183906.jpg

It sits fairly well flush with everything.
Also, that is a 3.7v Li-ion battery there, looks like they just stepped up the voltage on the circuit board. I would just have to desolder that USB port off of there and move the power switch to somewhere that makes more sense and there's a pretty good power supply.
 
brevik said:
I was able to get that charging bank apart today and stuck it in a hollowed out MicroTac battery.

View attachment 731436View attachment 731437

It sits fairly well flush with everything.
Also, that is a 3.7v Li-ion battery there, looks like they just stepped up the voltage on the circuit board. I would just have to desolder that USB port off of there and move the power switch to somewhere that makes more sense and there's a pretty good power supply.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Looks good. I'm going to see if I can fit a 5v boost chip on top of my battery as well as a li-ion charging board. Effectively what you have here.

Have you had your faceplate printed yet? I'm not sure where to go for it. I bet there's several people interested if we wanted to do a group order.
 
I haven't really looked too hard, but I remember asking around a little bit a couple of years ago, and I believe that a local print shop should be able to do it. I haven't really focused too much on the cosmetic build, just intermittently on the side as I'm mostly working on making sure that the electronics are complete.

I'll get my updated boards back soon, and if they work, then I'll be mainly focused on the enclosure construction. So as long as everything works out with the PCB, I should have an answer for you in a couple of weeks.
 
On second thought, I might just stick with the li-ion battery without boosting to 5v. It works fine with the slight voltage decrease and you get the added bonus of saving power and being able to measure the voltage change to estimate battery power left. I'm testing a battery function to show how much power is left.

20170528_105722.jpg
 
That's looking pretty damn good so far.

Is that faceplate printout too tall for your setup, or is that just from the printed sheet warping up? If its not sized correctly, I have the Illustrator .ai files posted on here in case you needed to customize it any.
My black box dimension are 50W x 70L x 15H millimeters and that is what I based my board and faceplate off of, in case reference helps.

I only used 5v because most of the hardware I have either runs 4v - 5.5v, or has an option for 3.7v. I can see our designs differ quite a bit. What kind of setup do you have going on there? Looks like you might have the LED display directly driven instead of multiplexed with those SMT ICs.

Also, who does your boards? I usually use oshpark.com, they seem to be relatively inexpensive, but it does take quite a while to get them back from the batch fabrication when they send it off.
 
brevik said:
That's looking pretty damn good so far.

Is that faceplate printout too tall for your setup, or is that just from the printed sheet warping up? If its not sized correctly, I have the Illustrator .ai files posted on here in case you needed to customize it any.
My black box dimension are 50W x 70L x 15H millimeters and that is what I based my board and faceplate off of, in case reference helps.

I only used 5v because most of the hardware I have either runs 4v - 5.5v, or has an option for 3.7v. I can see our designs differ quite a bit. What kind of setup do you have going on there? Looks like you might have the LED display directly driven instead of multiplexed with those SMT ICs.

Also, who does your boards? I usually use oshpark.com, they seem to be relatively inexpensive, but it does take quite a while to get them back from the batch fabrication when they send it off.
Click to expand...

The faceplate design is fine except it seems to be just a little short on the bottom, so I'll probably print another and cut it longer and paint the back black where appropriate.

My board is arduino based, with an atmega328 driving everything, mostly through shift registers. The displays are 2-digit displays that are multiplexed for each display. Each one has a dedicated shift register and a pull down resistor on the common cathode to switch digits.

I use seeed for my boards. They're pretty good until you have a problem. Their support sucks. If you pay for DHL, you get the boards in a week or so, but other shipping options take a month.
 
brevik said:
That's looking pretty damn good so far.

Is that faceplate printout too tall for your setup, or is that just from the printed sheet warping up? If its not sized correctly, I have the Illustrator .ai files posted on here in case you needed to customize it any.
My black box dimension are 50W x 70L x 15H millimeters and that is what I based my board and faceplate off of, in case reference helps.

I only used 5v because most of the hardware I have either runs 4v - 5.5v, or has an option for 3.7v. I can see our designs differ quite a bit. What kind of setup do you have going on there? Looks like you might have the LED display directly driven instead of multiplexed with those SMT ICs.

Also, who does your boards? I usually use oshpark.com, they seem to be relatively inexpensive, but it does take quite a while to get them back from the batch fabrication when they send it off.
Click to expand...

I love Sliders and I've seen your board design. I was chatting with Chris about his design, which is amazing, and he suggested that I might contact you. I was looking for a design that incorporated with 3 day digits at the top. Does your timer have this functionality?
 
Tenaciousbt said:
I love Sliders and I've seen your board design. I was chatting with Chris about his design, which is amazing, and he suggested that I might contact you. I was looking for a design that incorporated with 3 day digits at the top. Does your timer have this functionality?
Click to expand...

Yes, I currently have the three digits on top working for days time countdown on every version of the PCB that I've made, however, I haven't tested the newest PCB that I have uploaded and available. I have the board being made currently and it should be sent to me this week, so I should know whether or not everything works perfectly soon.
In theory everything works and I have a prototype breadboard built version that works, you can see here:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
brevik said:
Yes, I currently have the three digits on top working for days time countdown on every version of the PCB that I've made, however, I haven't tested the newest PCB that I have uploaded and available. I have the board being made currently and it should be sent to me this week, so I should know whether or not everything works perfectly soon.
In theory everything works and I have a prototype breadboard built version that works, you can see here:

https://youtu.be/AYJJvmFzb14
Click to expand...

Very nice. What kind of controller are you using? What size are the days displays? Do they fit in the window?
 
CJ2319 said:
Very nice. What kind of controller are you using? What size are the days displays? Do they fit in the window?
Click to expand...

Those components are just thrown together for the breadboard setup, so some of those parts wouldn't actually work for the real version measurement-wise, however I have everything listed for what is used in the PCB version in my thread on here http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=228806


The days digits that I have listed in the thread will fit in the window, theoretically. I've just recently picked this project back up after a couple years of stagnation. The point that I stopped at was after I had just designed, what appears to be, the final version of a practical PCB. So right now my design is all based off of measurements and modules that haven't been assembled. I'll be able to know exactly if the entire design needs any tweaks once I start putting it all together.

That MCU is basically just an ATmega32U4. I used an Arduino Micro unit in the circuit because I wanted to minimize the parts list and keep it as simple as possible for someone else to use my design to build their own timer.
 
brevik said:
Those components are just thrown together for the breadboard setup, so some of those parts wouldn't actually work for the real version measurement-wise, however I have everything listed for what is used in the PCB version in my thread on here http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=228806


The days digits that I have listed in the thread will fit in the window, theoretically. I've just recently picked this project back up after a couple years of stagnation. The point that I stopped at was after I had just designed, what appears to be, the final version of a practical PCB. So right now my design is all based off of measurements and modules that haven't been assembled. I'll be able to know exactly if the entire design needs any tweaks once I start putting it all together.

That MCU is basically just an ATmega32U4. I used an Arduino Micro unit in the circuit because I wanted to minimize the parts list and keep it as simple as possible for someone else to use my design to build their own timer.
Click to expand...

Ah. Got it. I used to use an arduino micro on my boards but I didn't like having to stack the arduino on the pcb so I decided to just start building the arduino into the board. Does it work out space wise inside the phone? Did you include an rtc? Are those shift registers above the bar graphs? I guess we really did take different paths on these. How did you do it all with so few pins on the arduino board? How is it multiplexed?
 
The Arduino fits really nicely actually, since the back of the phone is removed underneath the battery. There is a lot more room than it seems under there once those layers are removed.
I used the Arduino with two 8-digit display drivers from Maxim, the MAX7221 (or MAX7219 interchangeably) which frees up just about all of the Arduino pins and allows those to run all of the multiplexing. I stuck the 3 color LEDs and the emitter LEDs on the Arduino, but I could have had them wired to the display driver ICs. The bargraphs are also driven from the MAX7221, where they just count as a separate digit each. When I revise the design, I will be moving the extra LEDs off of the Arduino and adding more functionality.
I've been looking into incorporating and Raspberry Pi Zero W into the design, but that is a ways off.

Another thing that I had originally thought about was the height of the Arduino board

The Arduino also allows the easy task of using their Wiring development environment, which includes a bunch of premade libraries and lots of support. This will make the process so much easier for someone that doesn't have much electronics/microprocessor experience to pick up the project and accomplish the task.

Unfortunately I have no RTC in the design and the timekeeping is ran only from the MCU, but I doubt that I will actually need to be super accurate time, at least on the first successful version. I'm sure that I'll get around to making more revised builds with more features after I get this first one together.
 
brevik said:
The Arduino fits really nicely actually, since the back of the phone is removed underneath the battery. There is a lot more room than it seems under there once those layers are removed.
I used the Arduino with two 8-digit display drivers from Maxim, the MAX7221 (or MAX7219 interchangeably) which frees up just about all of the Arduino pins and allows those to run all of the multiplexing. I stuck the 3 color LEDs and the emitter LEDs on the Arduino, but I could have had them wired to the display driver ICs. The bargraphs are also driven from the MAX7221, where they just count as a separate digit each. When I revise the design, I will be moving the extra LEDs off of the Arduino and adding more functionality.
I've been looking into incorporating and Raspberry Pi Zero W into the design, but that is a ways off.

Another thing that I had originally thought about was the height of the Arduino board

The Arduino also allows the easy task of using their Wiring development environment, which includes a bunch of premade libraries and lots of support. This will make the process so much easier for someone that doesn't have much electronics/microprocessor experience to pick up the project and accomplish the task.

Unfortunately I have no RTC in the design and the timekeeping is ran only from the MCU, but I doubt that I will actually need to be super accurate time, at least on the first successful version. I'm sure that I'll get around to making more revised builds with more features after I get this first one together.
Click to expand...

Ah Yeah. The drivers are actually a really good idea working with limited pins and space. I wanted to keep mux to a minimum so I crammed a bunch of shift registers on my board. My first version was DIP but I had to switch to SMD to fit the power half circle leds and the accompanying shift register. I ended up building a reflow oven in the process. Learned a lot along the way. I might have to assemble one more board in hopes of getting to pot to function correctly. I've ordered a crystal and new dial from Shapeways, so I'm hoping to bring this to a close within a couple weeks.
 
I'd love to see a PCB with parts offered. I live for parts assembly. (I also tolerate design, but abhor programming ;) )

Regards,
ElectroDFW
 
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