cedd Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 Hi all Running parallel to the Cue Lights thread, I'm thinking about other extra bits and pieces I might want to include in a control panel on a DSM's desk. My DSM's desk isn't going to be quite like a conventional one. I want it to be school friendly, so rather than being a bit upright desk that you sit at, I want it to be a table top control panel that'll sit on a normal school desk in the wings. Maybe only measuring a foot square in footprint at most. One thing I think is pretty essential is a clock, and also at least a pair of timers/stopwatches. Three would be great (Act 1, Interval, Act 2). Here comes the problem. I can't find any! There are plenty of panel mount clocks on Ebay, Alibaba and the like. Mainly from China - which doesn't bother me too much. The problem is the stopwatches. I can find some that count in minutes, but I need minutes and hours. I don't want my DSM's having to divide by 60 to work out the length of their shows. It'd also be nice if the clock and stopwatches matched, at least in size and maybe bezel. Different colout LED's would be ok and maybe even a bonus to differentiate between clock and timer. Clearly the timers also need to be resetable! Any suggestions greatly received!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 Maplin have these for only £16.99: http://images.maplin.co.uk/300/n21fl.jpg It's an ATTINY2313 processor in a socket so it should be fairly easy to rewrite the code to suit. It would be better if the display was perpendicular to the main board but it might be possible to hacksaw it off! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weedkiller Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 This any good? Triple timer from HK £6.50. White case is a bit tacky, you might need to apply black vinyl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cedd Posted June 2, 2013 Author Share Posted June 2, 2013 For that price I could buy it and just hack the case off and fit it in my own box. Shame it's not illuminated somehow, means I'll have to provide front light somehow, which is a bit of a downer as everything else on the panel is designed to be read without illumination (backlit buttons etc.) but if I can't find anything else it'll do. Oh dear Boatman, now I'm going to have to get back in to coding again! I thought I'd escaped all that when I left college (I was actually quite good at it, but it quickly goes!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Pearce Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 Pile of NAND gates, a 555 and some flip flops. At college I made a 24hr clock out of that stuff and it ran stable for a good few months.Not exactly compact though...If your up for coding then a PIC chip should do it very easily, couple to a BCD display and you're off. My solution would be stopwatches and Velcro. Proper hacking :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 We recently bought a couple of flightcased portable prompt desks from Stage Electrics (to tide us over until our knackered 35-year-old ones get proper replacements when the building is refubished). They have a panel at the top with a LED digital clock and a timer working in hours/minutes/seconds. Not sure whether they'd sell these panels as a separate unit, but it's worth asking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cedd Posted June 3, 2013 Author Share Posted June 3, 2013 Funnily enough I spotted them on their stand at Plasa Focus. They looked really neat. The staff on their stand weren't too sure where they were sourced from, but I suspect for the right price they may be able to sell me a couple. Suspect it won't quite be a tenner with free shipping from China though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ninjadingle Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 I was going to add that our DSM desk (courtesy of Stage Electrics) has the same - a 24hr real time clock and a stopwatch, 19" rack and in different colours. Can try and get a pic if you're interested...Bit confused as to why you would want the 3 stopwatches? We just write down start and end time times on Acts, and use the stopwatch to time intervals. And if you're worried about school friendly - surely embedding a little maths into backstage work is going to be a good thing? And unless you've got a Ken Dodd tribute act on stage, most Acts should be less or just over the hour mark? (Definitely less than 2 hours!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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