38July 1999

By Sam Ulbing, N4UAU

Notes appear onpage 41.

Surface Mount Technology

—

You

Can

Work with It!

he first three parts of this arti-cle

have described rather easy-to-build projects. This one is abit more complex. If you like toexperiment, you have the opportunity totailor this project to your specific needs andoptimize its operation. Build it for a lovedone and impress them with your skills! If you spend as much time working on elec-tronic projects as I do, that loved one mightappreciate a little project like this made justfor them!

Project 4—The Hourglass 10-MinuteTimer

This month’s project is a modernized

Figure 15—Schematic of the older 10-minute timer. Unless otherwise specified, resistors are

W, 5% tolerance carbon-compositionor film units. Equivalent parts can be substituted.

Part 4

—

This month, we wrap up the series. Before we do, though,here

’

s that project I mentioned last month

…

version of “A Simple 10-Minute ID Timer,”that appears in

The

ARRL Handbook

Youcan use the Hourglass as an egg timer, or toremind you to move the sprinkler, or put thelaundry in the dryer, or as a two-hour timerto remind your teenager it’s time to get off the telephone! You start the timer by

turn-ing it upside down

, just like a sand hour-glass! As you’ll see, the operations of theold and new circuits are similar, but notexactly the same.

The Old-Technology Circuit

The

Handbook

circuit (Figure 15) isspecified for use with a 12 V supply, whichcould limit its portability and application.LM555 timer U1 is set up for a short dutycycle: 1 second

and 59 seconds

off

. Pin3 of the 4017 counter, U2, triggers after 10cycles, increasing the time delay to 600seconds. The alarm sounds, the circuit re-sets and starts counting again. Ten minutesis about the maximum practical time delayof this circuit.

The New-Technology Circuit

Surface-mount technology allows us tobuild this month’s project (including itspower supply) on a board that fits inside a35-mm film canister (seeFigure 16), so it’scompletely portable.

The low voltage andcurrent demands of the ICs allow poweringthe circuit with a 3-V lithium battery.Refer toFigure 17. An RC controlledtimer, U1, is routed to a counter, U2, toextend the time base to 10 minutes. When

July 199939

the 10 minute limit is reached, the appro-priate pin on U2 goes high, turning on aswitch, Q1, which sets off an alarm.U1 of Figure 17is an MIC1557. Dubbedthe “IttyBitty RC Timer” by the manufac-turer,

it’s an SOT-23 version of the 555.R1 and C1 set the cycle time. (R1 is com-posed of a pot, R1A, and a fixed-value re-sistor, R1B.) I use a 50%-duty-cycle timerbecause it requires fewer parts than anasymmetrical-duty-cycle timer. I selecteda cycle time of about one second becausethe data sheets for the LM555 and theMIC1557 indicate that capacitor leakageaffects the accuracy of periods longer than10 seconds. With just a one-second cycletime, it’s necessary to use a longer delay inU2, so I added an MC14020, a 14-bit bi-nary counter that can count up to 16,384.By using a count of 1024—and adjustingthe values of R1 and C1—I achieved anaccurate 10-minute delay.This flexible circuit can be modified forlonger or shorter delays, from as little as afew seconds to as long as 24 hours! (See

Experimenting with the Timer

later.) Ihad a difficult time finding counters in SMpackages, and as you can see in the photo,the chip is “huge.” (Perhaps this indicatesthere’s a better way to handle delay circuitswith SMT.)The output at pin 15 of U2 triggers Q1through D1. Q1 is not just any MOSFET—the IRLML2402 is a state-of-the-art device.Its gate turn-on voltage is only 1.5 V, and at3 V, the MOSFET is fully on. (Not too manyyears ago, MOSFETs required 10 or 12 Vto turn on. Most logic-level MOSFETs to-day still require 5 V, which makes themuseless in a 3-V supply project.) Althoughthe IRLML2402 is packaged in a Micro 3package (which is smaller than an SOT-23package), its

resistance is only 0.25

Ω

and it can switch current levels up to 1 A.

Figure 16—A top view of the SM versionof the timer described in the text. The 3-Vbattery that powers the circuit is mountedon the bottom side of the board.Figure 17—Schematic of the SM “hourglass” 10-minute timer. A 3-V lithium battery powersthe circuit. The section of the circuit enclosed in dashed lines can be replaced by either ofthe circuits shown inFigures 18A and 18B. Unless otherwise specified, resistors are5% tolerance SM units. The resistors I used are SM devices in 1206 cases. Equivalentparts can be substituted. See the sidebar “Manufacturers and Distributors of SMTEquipment and Parts,” in Part 1,

QST

, May 1999, for a list of suppliers.

You might ask, “Why not use a bipolartransistor instead of a MOSFET?” Thereare several reasons. Transistors require biascurrent, MOSFETs do not. A small transis-tor with a 30 mA load develops a 300 mVdrop. The MOSFET has only a 4 mV drop,an important consideration when the sup-ply voltage is only 3 V.

Also, a MOSFETcan be used as a comparator. At levels lessthan 1 V (for this device), the MOSFET is

off

, and for levels above 1.5 V, it is

.I wanted to use an

AND

condition tosound the buzzer, BZ1. D2 connects thegate of Q1 to the output of U1. This ar-rangement turns on the buzzer only whenU2 pin 15 is positive

and

pin 5 of U1 ispositive. Because the level at U1 pin 5changes at about one cycle per second, theresult is a pulsating buzzer that is morenoticeable and uses less power than a con-tinuously sounding buzzer. Another reasonI could not use a transistor at Q1 is becausethe voltage drops of D1 and D2 result in alow voltage level of 0.6 V at Q1; that is toohigh to turn off a transistor.With a battery-powered device, I didn’twant the timer to cycle continually; thatwould deplete the battery if I forgot to shut

BT1—3-V, lithium CR2032, etc.BZ1—Piezo buzzer (see text)C1—4.7

F, 16 V tantalum.C2—0.1

F ceramic (I used a SM devicein a 0805 case).D1/D2, D3/D4—BAW56LT1 (common-anode diode pairs in an SOT23 case);pairs of 1N914 or 1N4148 diodes can besubstituted.Q1, Q2—IRLM2402 MOSFETR1A—100-k

Ω

pot (Bourns 3364W)SW1—Encapsulated tilt switch (availablefrom author)U1—MIC1557BM5, Micrel IttyBitty RCtimer/oscillatorU2—MC14020BD, 14-bit binary counterMisc: Battery holder, Keystone #3002.

PHOTO BY LODER BROOKS, KD4AKW

40July 1999

off the timer. This circuit shuts itself off.The buzzer sounds for about three seconds,and if it is not restarted, the circuit goes tosleep. It works like this: D3 and D4 form an

AND

gate controlling Q2. After pin 15 of U1 goes high and the buzzer sounds, thetimer continues to count until U2 pin 7 alsogoes high. Then, Q2 turns on and pin 3 of U1 goes low. Pin 3 is U1’s

CHIP SELECT

pin; when it goes low, U1 stops runningand its current drain is reduced to 1

A.With U1 sleeping, its output goes low. Thatshuts off the buzzer via D2. Total currentdrain while sleeping is about 5

A. Underthese conditions, a lithium 2032 batteryshould last several years.To restart the timer (from sleep mode orwhen it is buzzing), just turn it upside downand then right side up. The tilt switch turnsthe power off, then on. C2 and R2 form apower-up reset that restarts U2 at 0 with apositive pulse to pin 11 through C2.

Experimenting with the Timer

Using the right audio transducer makesa major difference in audibility. Most trans-ducers require more than 3 V to operate. I

Figure 18

—

Two modifications you can make to the basic hourglass timer ofFigure 17.At A, use of a piezo buzzer requiring a higher supply voltage (6 V) can take advantage of theMAX871 inverter circuit described in Project 2B. R5 is a 1 M

Ω

resistor in a 1206 SM case.An externally driven buzzer can employ the circuit shown at B using an MIC1557.Component identifications are those given inFigure 17.Note the value change of R1.

—

10-k

Ω

pot (Bourns 3364W)Figure 19

—

Here

’

s the fundamentalapproach to constructing a resonator toimprove the loudness and purity of thebuzzer

’

s tone. The resonant frequency (f

)should equal twice the frequency of thebuzzer to increase sound pressure. Do notmake dimension D too small, or theacoustic resistance will increase. Theequation is a starting point;experimentation will optimize your results(see text). Dimensions are in millimetersunless otherwise noted.

tried a RadioShack 273-074 transducer andit worked, but its output level was quitelow. One way to raise the sound level is toraise the buzzer voltage. I did that with thecircuit of Project 2B, as shown inFigure18A. Some parts catalogs list piezo trans-ducers that are externally driven and oper-ate at 1.5 or 3 V. (The RadioShack buzzermentioned earlier is internally driven: It hasa square-wave generator built into it). Iused a piezo transducer driven by anMIC1557, as shown inFigure 18B. It has aloud signal, but I found that setting theexact frequency needed for maximumsound was tricky. The best signal I couldobtain came from a TMB-05

buzzer that Iplaced in a resonator and drove with theMAX871 circuit.

A Resonator

A neat way to improve the loudness andpurity of the buzzer’s tone (some piezoresonators have a harsh note) is to place thebuzzer in a Helmholtz resonator.

This is acylinder or tube designed to resonate at acertain frequency. Every resonator I usedmade the sound available from the trans-ducer louder and clearer. The informationinFigure 19 can help you design a resonator. If the math bothers you, try using asimple resonator made from a half-inchwater pipe PVC end cap and drill a 3-mmdiameter hole in the end; it worked well forme. I ground down the material surround-ing the hole to make it thinner (smaller L)and adjusted the distance (A) for maximumsound. Best results are obtained when thetube’s resonant frequency is about twicethat of the piezo transducer’s frequency.

Other Time Delays

InFigure 17, instead of connecting D1to pin 15 of U2, you can attach it to anotherpin to obtain a different time delay.Table 2shows the delays you can achieve whenusing a one-second cycle time at U1. Byadjusting the values of R1 and C1, you canobtain nearly any time delay you want. Forthe arrangement to work correctly, the U2pin you use to trigger Q1 must have agreater number of counts than the pin youuse to shut down the circuit, which is whythe data inTable 2starts at 16 counts.If you make your own PC board, youcan customize it as needed. The premadePC board (seeNote 24) is designed so youcan add the circuits of Figure 18A or B ona separate board to drive the buzzer.

Construction Comments

I used a 0.005-inch wheel for the criticalcuts at U1, Q1 and Q2 (seeFigure 20). Forthe other cuts, I switched to a 0.009-inchwheel. The 0.005-inch cut is so narrow that

= Resonant frequencyC = Speed of sound (3.44

mm/s)= 344 m/sD = Diameter of the sound emissionholeL = Depth of sound emission holed = Diameter of chambera = Depth of chamberV = Volume of resonant chamber =

fCD41V L 0.75D

( )