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timer circuit

Submitted by RCFisher on Sat, 11/13/2010 - 18:35
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Well I have been trying to find a moderately inexpensive timer for my Space shuttle project. I have a launch to shoot on 11/30, hopefully, and what I need to do is to make a alarm clock type of thing to turn on our triggers at the launch window. I have a hand full of plugin wall timers to turn on lights. I was hoping to use them to switch on power to the triggers when the launch window opens and then turn off when it closes 10 minutes later. I have one right now that has 3 wires coming out of the clock circuit, 1 VDD, 1 com, 1 signal I think. If all of the timers coming are these then it may not be too hard. I could just add a transistor circuit to drive the relay, off 9vdc. My question here is could I do this with a Arduino pro, or small one, and a DS1307 RTC to then switch a transistor to drive the power relay. The hardware is not much of an issue but the software is. It would be great to program all 7 days launch windows so it will just run by itself no interaction needed except for checking when the launch doesn't happen. I am going to order the DS1307 and crystal on monday to experiment with this. Anyone have ideas on the software since I don't really have a lot of time to tinker with this.

I had also noted that someone had posted some code for a RTC a while back but how do I interface that with some way to trigger the relay?

Thanks in advance.

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RC, Check out this Time

Submitted by shutterdrone on Sun, 11/14/2010 - 19:54.

RC,

Check out this Time library for the Arduino, it supports the DS1307. http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/Time

Then, you could just set up an array with the days, hours, and minutes that you want to start the windows at (if they are a set length, just state how long the window is instead of needing to track end dates), and check to see if the current time is within that window. If it is, and your program is not currently doing what it should do within the window, then start doing what it is supposed to be doing. Should be a fairly simple sketch.

!c

Thanks Church I will try it

Submitted by RCFisher on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 05:20.

Thanks Church I will try it when I get my 1307s, just ordered some so I can deal with this a bit later in the week.

I think this is almost all in

Submitted by cronix on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 12:04.

I think this is almost all in the MicroEngine. The engine can turn on lights on/off within the shooting window (at a configurable time correlated to the time lapse shot). I use it to turn on my studio strobes before I take a timelapse shot. The MicroEngine can turn of one signal and turn on another. It can be used to turn off annoying lights before you take the shot.

RTC support is also implemented. I only need to add support for shooting within specific time frames. You can already enter the time frames, I just have to include them in the code that is running during a time lapse shoot.

You could even use the MicroEngine without the DFRobot LCD. Just hardcode the required values and run the sketch.

Check out the current DEV on SourceForge. I just updated a lot of the code last weekend.

Hi Cronix I will try this as

Submitted by RCFisher on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 15:43.

Hi Cronix
I will try this as well, not a lot of time since this stuff needs to work and ready by the 11/28. I was hoping for a bit of help so I wouldn't have to spend time, I don't have, getting up to speed on this stuff. Oh well. I guess I don't need to sleep.

Thanks