Re: Cannibalising Mini-timer

[Richard Malcolm-Smith <rich@xxxxxxx>]

Paul Gordon wrote:

> I've just opened one up, and as you might expect, the inside is mostly
air!
>
> There are just 3 small PCB's - one attached to the top immediately
under all
> the buttons, one with the LED clock display, and another on the
"floor"
> where the bulk of the components are.
>
> These are all linked by a number of short ribbon cables. The PCB for
the
> buttons is a membrane type keypad - ie there are no wires to the
buttons so
> replacing them or even moving them will be tricky. The only option as
I see
> it will be to reuse the PCB as is, but re-mounted in my custom
enclosure,
> I'll be able to just leave off the buttons I don't want to use, and
only
> make panel cut-outs in the new enclosure for the buttons I do want to
use...
> It means there will be much less flexibility with the layout than I
had
> hoped for, basically I will be restricted to pretty much re-mounting 2
> minitimer's side-by-side in a new enclosure, and omitting the
redundant
> buttons. (who *ever* uses the "security" button!?!?!)
>
> That is, unless I can figure out the matrix and work out where to
connect a
> bunch of new momentary switxhes....

I was thinking of making a daughterboard to go into where the
"big" chip
is to do what it does, but better ;)

One thing I would have to do is up the refresh rate of the display.. it
flickers waaaay too much. I would also want some way of setting the
clock remotely, but with only an X10 tx on board thats not as easy as I
would hope for. Also I would want to query alarm times and set them
remotely so that it could be intelegent with respect to day of week etc.
At the moment I leave it set to "set clock" on friday and
saturday
nights..