Good Times, Part 3.

[ Part 1   Part 2    Part 3 ]

Welcome to my 3rd and probably last post on the Good Times timer. I want to write about the pieces of flair I put into it.

This project was for my wife, and the timing of the project happened to be late November last year, so I decided I would make it Christmas gift, and I stopped showing her progress on it.

Of course, I had to add some Easter eggs to the project :)

Good Times, Part 2.

[ Part 1   Part 2    Part 3 ]

One of the most fun parts of making the timer was the capacitive touch buttons. So in this post, I'm going to touch on how I did it. I might even post a little code :) ( I'm still getting the hang of this blogger thing so bare with me as I play with formatting, etc). 

The inspiration.

I've worked with mechanical buttons on past projects, and I was always less than happy with how the buttons looked, or cost, or how much effort you had to put in to "getting it right". I've spent hours on mouser or digikey looking at buttons, only to discover the datasheets didn't really give you a good grip on the aesthetics or "feel" of the mechanics. Also, the physical chassis construction work, (my least favorite part of a project), seemed to consume a disproportionate amount of effort. Touch buttons, I thought, would be easy, cheap, and I had a lot of options for how to make them look nice. I was aware of the Atmel QTouch chips, but every time I went to tack some on to one of my hobby parts purchases, they were always out of stock. Then I came across this in an Arduino forum (I don't actually own an Arduindo, but a lot of people do some clever things with them):

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1171076259 (Paul Badger)

That got me thinking, the low AVR microcontrollers are cheaper than most of the touch sensor controllers, and come in DIP form factor. It's such a simple idea, it's brilliant!. So with with a breadboard, my trusty AVR Dragon, and some aluminum foil, I experimented.

The implementation:

I didn't have this blog in mind when doing the project, so I neglected to get a good shot of the early experiments, but this one shows my test touch panel, as well as other parts of the project at various levels of completion.

My test touch panel. (also check out the finished display board, and my homemade  breadboard/6 pin isp adapter)

Good Times, Part 1.

[ Part 1   Part 2    Part 3 ]
I've been meaning to create this post for a while. Besides my day job, and my recent sojourn into Android, I'm into hobby electronics. Now I've had the code slinging itch since I saw my friends Timex Sinclair 1000 when I was 11, but in the past couple of years, I've really embraced the breadboard and the soldering iron. Software is very satisfying, but there is something about making something that you can hold, touch. And that you appear to your loved ones to possess some sort of voodoo that can transform a mess of wires and chips and LEDs into something that does something.

In fact, it was my desire to show my wares to the world that inspired me to finally get off my rump and create this blog.

Now to exhibit A...

The background:

Last year, after working for several grueling months on a clock, (still at 90% complete a year later, the topic of a future post), I wanted to make something that my wife would not just appreciate, but enjoy, get excited about. So I asked her what type of electronic device she felt was missing in her life. She replied that she wanted a "time out/ time's up timer" for our kids, who happen to be procrastination aficionados, and occasionally earn a trip to the stairs to "think about what they've done". And so was born the "Good Times" timer.

Here is the finished result: (right before boxing to put under the tree last Christmas)
(Apologies, I'm really an awful photographer)

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