Electro Boy clock/automatic timer

A fleamarket find, I had a hunch it would work even without any promises.

Grime made it looked worse, as if the plastic had melted at places but all wiped off nicely. 

It's not any kind of collectors item, I paid 2 euros and I'm seeing them going for similar prices in eBay. Boxed and with manuals it might fetch some more.

I didn't think much about the weird clock face and the fact it has an outlet for plugging in another device. I thought it was a cool-looking clock from 1960s/1970s. 

But it's not just a clock but a timing mechanism with on-off switches around the face.

From what I've seen, electric timers are usually sold separately as add-ons to the electric outlet, without any actual clock dials.

I've now learned the Electro Boy brand from Muller is quite old and there may be devices with similar function already from the 1950s. The one I have is most likely from 1970s, and from what I could find there are at least white, yellow and black varieties of this same model.

There are 96 separate switches, giving a quarter-hour resolution to the timer.

The knob in the middle adjusts the entire time. You can't separately turn hour and minute hands. Also, you can't lazily assume AM or PM, as the timer hand is in 24h format. The adjustment is pleasantly tactile and audible.

The clock in action is very silent. I'm generally annoyed if I can hear the tic-toc of a mechanical clock, but here it's really subtle.

In contrast to this the relay inside is quite noisy, I wouldn't want to be sleeping nearby when it switches on. There's a single button on top of the clock to override the switches.

The timer switches caused a few moments of head scratching. I've understood you usually create "zones" for on and off time ranges, but here each switch acts as a flip-flop. So you only change two switches to create a time range. This may also pose some limits to how the timer can be used, but I didn't go out of my way to test different configurations.

Turning switches on very near the 24h hand doesn't often work well, and trying to push the hand past a set switch (for testing purposes) feels a little suspect too. The device works best when the time is set knowingly well beforehand.

The clock invites romantic notions of an electro-mechanical "smart home" before the internet era, as it looks like more of a household item rather than something for the workplace/garage.

You know, in times past, people would wake up and move physically to their workplaces, as if parts of a huge clockwork. As your alarm rings, the porridge and coffee would already be heating up.

It's unlikely you could use this for activating an oven, but perhaps a separate cooktop, toaster or a water heater may be turned on before the alarm clock (separate) would ring.

Or, turn on a separate radio and also make it turn off as you've left. This is already something many later alarm clocks would do anyway.

I did test an USB mini-fan, but then preferred to operate it with a more current timing mechanism.

I'm thinking of a scenario where the clock turns on an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, it does something for 15 minutes, and is shut off. From a power consumption standpoint it might be better to use a low-power Pi directly and have it on 24h...

So, ultimately, it might be best to use the old Electro Boy as a cool-looking clock.

Industrial electronic timers and timing computers are still produced under the (Hugo) Muller brand. Based on their website this became their main product in the 1980s.

6€ Fleamarket bonanza

I found these three items, each cost 2€.

Virtual reality!

You'd think VR costs tens of thousands, but it actually costs 2€. If you already have the phone, that is. In the past I've been semi-impressed by how these plastic gimmicks could deliver a VR-type experience in a mobile phone.

I tried the Shinecon VR on an iPhone and it brings the usual split-eye head-achey effect and viewing angle for Youtube VR videos.

The eye horizontal and depth adjustment can be changed but overall this might be designed for a bit smaller head. My nose couldn't find a good location inside.

From the few videos I tried I could not really judge if the lens settings were correct or not. The head angle tracking in iPhone has been so far more impressive than the depth effect. Some videos were also kind of fake and not really stereoscopic.

I didn't try it on any games as they might need a separate controller so this side of things remains to be seen.

Karaoke microphones!

This was actually a quite nice find for 2€. These are Playstation 2 Singstar Karaoke mics. 

I stuck the USB adapter directly into my Linux system and picked the "serial" microphone input in Audacity. The other mic goes to Left channel and the other to Right. Seemed to work well enough on Performous, the free Singstar-like, and why not.

Obviously I could use the mics without the USB adapter, and the adapter without the mics. Maybe I'll follow up one day with my experiments.

The mic heads could be screwed out and the insides were a bit dusty and a christmas tree needle was stuck there.

I suspect it is a USB 1 interface but that should be enough.

Edit: The audio connectors are standard but have been made so that very few plugs fit them physically.

Mini Clothes Iron!

This Black&Decker Stowaway clothes iron doesn't have much to do with computers or electronics, and I added this to the pile mostly for the cute design.

Well, who knows I might want to heat something when building stuff and this would suit better than a full-size iron or a soldering iron.

The shape is very compact but the cable is still rather huge. Whether the handle lock doubles as a safety, I didn't yet check. There's a 110V/220V switch too.

Edit: After overwhelming popular demand, I will also show the iron in the compact mode. The cable can then wrap around the whole thing if needed.

I can also confirn that the handle lock does not double as a safety for the thermostat. So the iron can heat in this position too.

Bonus round:

A week later, I got this cable tester.

It works with a battery and blinks lights one at a time to show if the RJ45 or RJ11 cable connections work.

Fleamarket pedal

5 Euro foot pedals from a flea market. At first I thought it might be a sewing machine pedal, but seeing as it is pretty heavy and has two pedals so I don't know.

I had no fitting DIN connector and the cable smelled so strongly of old house, I got rid of the cable altogether.

Opening the box was not obvious. I had to tear off the soft rubber bottom to reach the screw that holds the pedal axle in place. (The tiny hole in the axle of the loose pedal at the top image).

These machine screws were mightily stuck and I may have contributed to bending them, when trying to "open" the axle from the end.

Inside there was a tiny surprise: There were more parts than I would have expected. What does the cog do?

First I thought there was some complex system for softening the punch for the microswitches. Which it probably kind of does too...

But the pedals are not both on-off switches. The left one has a mechanical flip-flop latch that keeps the switch "pressed". Were there no microswitches with this functionality?

The left pedal then controls whether the right pedal presses go through at all.


Using the pedal

I had some visions about using the pedal as a second fire button on C64, or controlling my own programs through Arduino serial. Or a weird chess clock.

But, first, the pedal could be used in something that actually needs a pedal.

Enter the Alesis Samplepad Pro, another recent cheap acquisition. It's an electric drum kit that can be played with drumsticks.

There's not much pro about it, as it has a widely known crosstalk problem between the pads. But fortunately by adjusting the individual pad sensitivy values the problem can be practically removed.

My approach so far has been to make Kick, Snare and Hi-Hat more sensitive (6) and concentrate on using them. The rest of the pads can have level 2 sensitivity.

Now if the kick drum could be delivered with pedal, I could remove that pad from the equation altogether.

The Samplepad Pro has a pedal option for kick drum and hihat, and I could connect the pedal microswitch easily to this connector. I soldered in some cables, of course missing the right connections at first, but finally it worked.

Here I've used the 'trigger' option. Possibly the 'switch' allows a velocity control through a resistor.

Well, honestly I can't play at all, but already could see it would make more sense to have a pedal together with the pads. It's a bit dificult to generate proper patterns by using drumsticks alone, even though the geniuses in Youtube can do that too. Then again using both feet and hands is another level of motoric articulation and it doesn't come too easily either.

Well, the ergonomics of the situation now weigh much more heavily than when just using drumsticks. It's also blindingly obvious the pedal is not really suitable for a musical instrument. Ok, so I had to remove the rubber footing that would have kept it better in position, but I doubt if it would help that much.

No wonder the add-on pedals easily cost as much as the second-hand Samplepad.

Trigging the kick was not as accurate as I would have expected. If I make a steady rhythm it will pick all microswitch clicks accurately. But if I click it in really rapidly, only the first goes through. I'm wondering if this is a problem (or intentional design) with the Samplepad input detection, or with the microswitch itself.

So, a nice junk find that at least motivated me to do something more material after a long while.

MO28UO mouse

This MO28UO is an IBM-branded mouse from early 2000s I suppose. Looking around it may have been sold as Lenovo-branded too. Certainly it would fit the Thinkpad colour theme...

Although I like the slightly old-school weight and speed of the mouse, I noted the wheel is prone to mis-interpret the direction.

I opened the mouse and took some images.

The scroll wheel is not based on an optical coupler, so the wheel doesn't have holes. The axle had accumulated some dirt and hairs, which I removed.

I didn't expect it to matter much in this case.

The wheel part is simply lying on top of the wheel button switch, which might already be a source of some problems.

After cleaning, the wheel might have improved slightly but I suspect the mechanism is simply not that good to begin with, or it has become worn out.

Although a tactile/audible response from the wheel is a good thing, this one's a bit too noisy for my tastes.

So I guess I'll abandon this mouse...

KC901 Family Game

Following a tip-off, I bought this Chinese console from a flea market for 2 euros. It looks vaguely like a Sega Megadrive II but I suspected it was probably a NES clone.

The case is labeled as KC901 Family Game, but I could not find much about it on the internet. I did learn the polarity: tip is minus and the ring is plus. I tried with 9 volts and this appears to be ok. Also, some say the A-V plugs are not really connected so there is only RF. Looking closer at the circuit board this seems to be true, the parts are soldered in but there is no connection!

Left: the TV/power stuff, centre: the CPU/Cartridge, Right: Controllers/inputs

I stripped the cartridge of it's cover, which had come loose anyway, then went in into the console itself. There's a large "clamp" thingy that helps remove a cartridge with a push of a button.
I removed this and all non-essential parts and tried to connect the device to a TV, but got no picture.

Looking inside, I saw that someone had tried to re-solder a few connections and the RF, and the results are even uglier than my own solders. The circuit board surface had become damaged too.

I removed some with a solder pump, cleaned the connections and tried to get the thing running. Eventually I could get a hold of the picture via antenna, and it's a pretty solid image for an RF.

The controller and CPU compartments are quite clean, the power/TV not so much

I also tried whether the internal "video" pin could deliver a signal to the TV video, but although I saw a glimpse of a rolling dark ghost of a screen, this does not seem to be the way to go. If it were so easy, the A-V would probably have been connected.

Guess if there are really 150 games...

For some reason I could only get one controller working. Plug them both in and neither works. There's logic inside the controllers, they are not simply a bundle of switches, so a broken controller or a wrong connection might explain this.

What's a "Comnado"?

But it's enough to see this is a NES clone alright. The 150-in-1 cartridge is even a bigger rip-off than my other 8-bit "Powerstation 64" NES clone, here there are maybe a handful of games with zillion variants with different names.

Possibly the variants have been patched to create some negligible difference, but I could not be bothered to check this. The presence of Duck Hunt and Wild Gunman shows this system has been indeed sold with a light gun, but without one I can't really play them.

The power/ TV crap, showing some of my cable additions

Although I'm not 100% certain the 150-in-1 belongs with the console, I think that's the idea. Can't say if a NES clone like this runs real NES cartridges, and if it does, do they need to be Japanese, European or US? No clue.

Wild Gunman

A Potpourri of Space-age Objects

Only a few trinkets to show here. (I'm building toy robots and there's very little progress yet.)

Zen-On Metrina Quartz Metronome

First on display is an electronic metronome, possibly from the 1980s. Besides the beat per minute dial, the wheel also shows corresponding musical terms such as Andante, Moderato, Allegro and so on. Powered with a single 9V battery, the metronome can be made quiet and the sound can be output from a phone jack to a mixer or headphones.

The A4 position also gives a 440hz tone for tuning instruments, which is pretty handy. The tempo range is from 40BPM to 208BPM. I have not tested if the device is accurate.

Gillette Techmatic 

Next up is Gillette Techmatic safety razor, a design from late 1960s, this model likely from the 1970s. A razor like this (but not exactly like this) was taken on some of the Apollo flights. Not that it's cutting edge, as it is very gimmicky. Instead of a replaceable single blade, the blade is actually a band which can be cycled onwards with a lever. Turning the lever revealed some unused blade, so I actually tried out the razor. It's pretty horrible, but it did cut the face hair. I had to finish with a modern blade, though.

My God, It's Full of Stars!

I think the device can be called innovative, and it certainly looks more interesting than any current cheap razor. But it can be easily argued that the strange blade is just a trick to sell a novelty, and the unnecessary bits and pieces appeal to the tech-hungry male.

The Astronaut Box for the Astronaut Blade.

Safety razors are pretty crappy products overall. Try to buy a handle and replaceable blades and you'll find out the company will eventually change the connector so that you have to buy a new handle anyway after a few years.

The handy interface will tell you if the band has run out.

Sanyo Data Recorder

Ok, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here. A Sanyo "data" recorder. In addition to a normal tape recorder, this has Attenuator, Phase and Monitor switches. The attenuator boosts the signal, which is pretty good for square waves I guess. I'm not sure about the phase reversing, perhaps it inverts the waveform. Don't know what's the use for that. Monitor turns the speaker on and off. It's not the most beautiful tape deck there is, but I kind of appreciate the humble no-nonsense design and the tiny triangular buttons for the "extra" functions.

With some heavy-duty spreadsheet software largely written in BASIC.

Canon S-90

This is an electronic typewriter from the era when computers and word processors were already going on quite strong. As it is fully electronic, it is really more like a printer with a keyboard. There's not that much to say, because I could not get the case open. There's some knack to opening it other than "pulling really hard". The screws came off easily enough so I don't think it has been intentionally prevented, it's just I don't get it. I'll see about it later.

The S-90 has a card-type connector to the left side which I suppose enables more typefaces. The right side has a 9-pin type connector. This means the typewriter could act as a printer to a home computer. I doubt the printer has any processor or memory as such, but a dedicated controller that manages the LCD display and keyboard input. Only one row of characters can be edited before they are printed.

I would be interested in the innards, as it might be possible to house a computer board inside the case of a typewriter and make use of a rather excellent keyboard. However, I would probably not want to ruin such a cool looking device as this one, but it's an idea I've been toying with. Occasionally, it's possible to come across really cheap typewriters such as this, but most I've seen in net auctions and such are a bit overpriced. I'd also avoid any mechanical and electromechanical typewriters, because rewiring their keyboards is probably a different game entirely.