PROGRAMMABLE TIMER FOR APPLIANCES

This programmable timer is usefu for domestic, commercial as well as industrial applications. It automatically turns the appliance on/off after a preset time. The time period can be varied from 8 seconds to 2 hours with the help of rotary switches S2 and S3. The circuit works in two modes: off mode and cyclic mode. Slide switch S4 is used for mode selection.

In the off mode, the appliance turns on after a preset time (set by rotary switch S2), remains on for another preset time (set by rotary switch S3) and then turns off. In the cyclic mode, this process repeats again and again.

The circuit is built around three quad two-input NAND gate ICs CD4011 (IC1, IC3 and IC5), two 14-bit binary ripple counters CD4020 (IC2 and IC4) and a relay driver transistor (T1). It works off a 12V DC, 500mA power supply. You can also power the circuit from mains by using a 12V DC, 500mA adaptor in place of the 12V DC power supply.

Time Delay Touch Switch

Fitting switches which turn off automatically after a preset time in these locations can reduce the electricity consumed quite significantly. A single 100W bulb left burning all night (say eight hours) would consume 800W/hrs. The same bulb fitted with a switch which turned off automatically after say five minutes would consume only 83W/hrs, even in the unlikely event that it were to be activated ten times during this period.

Triac Control
There are two major problems to solve when designing a touch switch to replace a conventional mechanical light switch and these concern the power supply and noise immunity.

The main switching element used to control the light is a triac, a semiconductor a.c. switch. This is normally in its off or non-conducting state but can be switched into conduction by means of a small trigger current fed to its gate terminal. Once triggered it will remain conducting until the current through it drops below a certain value (known as the holding current). This occurs normally on a.c. supplies when the voltage drops to zero at the end of every mains half-cycle, and the triac must be retriggered again if the light is to remain on.

As with any switch, the voltage across a triac when it is in its off state will be the supply voltage (in this case 230V a.c.). When the triac is on, the voltage across it will be around 1V a.c., depending on the current. The triac therefore dissipates very little power so no heatsink is required.

MAINS Failure Alarm

MAINS failure alarms are often employed in situations where the removal of the mains supply from a piece of equipment can have adverse or even disastrous consequences.

Very often, the “failure” may simply be the result of the switch on the outlet socket being operated inadvertently and this may have no immediately noticeable effect on the equipment. The results of the mistake may only become evident a few hours or even days later, when it is too late.

The circuit described here overcomes all of these problems at a stroke and also does away with the need for mains plugs, or indeed any connections to the mains at all. It does so by monitoring the electric field which exists around a cable connected to the a.c. supply (whether it is carrying a current or not).

By placing it on or near to the cable of the appliance to be monitored, it will also sound the alarm if the fuse in the plug blows, the outlet is switched off or the plug disconnected. It will only fail to detect the situation where the equipment itself has been switched off via its own built-in switch. However, since many appliances such as freezers do not have on/off switches, this is not really a problem.

The circuit is extremely simple and inexpensive to build. Its simplicity and lack of any specialized components should make it attractive to many constructors who will probably already have most of the components to hand. The absence of any mains connections should make it an ideal project for a beginner.

As with many simple circuits, however, the advantages and possible uses take longer to describe than the operation of the circuit diagram which is shown in Fig.1.

Voltage Booster – High Voltage from a 5V Supply

Digital circuits operating from 5V regulated supplies are common but occasionally a higher voltage is required, perhaps for a bio-medical circuit, or for liquid level measurement or for monitoring high resistance contacts. For such circuits a means of generating a high voltage from the 5V supply can be a solution. Diode/capacitor multipliers can offer advantages over switched-mode circuits, since they do not use inductors, are easier to design and troubleshoot and often generate less radiated interference.

The principle of the voltage multiplier is fairly well known. A capacitor is used with a square wave drive signal to “pump” current through a pair of diodes, roughly doubling the supply voltage. A series of such stages can be cascaded to raise the voltage in multiples of the supply, but it is possible to improve efficiency and reduce the number of stages by using two driving signals with opposite phases. However, each diode incurs a drop of about 0.6V so with two diodes per stage, and with an initial supply of just 5V this becomes significant, leading to poor efficiency and an impractical number of stages.

These problems are overcome in the Voltage Booster circuit design of Fig.1 by increasing the voltage before multiplication with IC1, an SI7660 “negative rail generator” (not the ICL7660 – ARW). The additional negative supply is generated very efficiently since switching is performed not by diodes but by CMOS switches in the IC, which cause almost no voltage loss at low currents.