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Darkrook timer and safelight

An integrated safelight/timer console, which will have a countdown timer with three preset timer options, and enlarger switch

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I am making an integrated safelight/timer console, which will have a countdown timer with three preset timer options, and an enlarger switch for controlling that when I need to.

Darkroom safelights are expensive. About £20 for a bulb, which could smash. About £25 for an enclosure with a small and weird bulb that can also smash.

And these are the cheap options! You can spend rather a lot of money on darkroom safelights.

If I have convinced you that darkroom safelights are expensive, let me introduce you to darkroom timers.

A darkroom timer plugs into an enlarger (a fancy torch)  and turns it off after a certain amount of time. Pretty basic, right?

It turns out these can retail for £85+ which strikes me as being fairly silly.

This gubbin fixes all that - it has four timers (one for enlarging, three for dev/stop/fix), and controls both safelights and the enlarger too.  It uses a little piezo buzzer to bleep the seconds away when the safelight is off or when I'm looking at something else at the time.

Code here, CAD here.

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  • Up and running

    marcellothearcane08/24/2020 at 12:00 0 comments

    I had to order some cheap red LED strips from Amazon, and it's surprisingly hard to find plain and simple 5v ones.  These arrived, and I added 2N3904 NPN transistor to drive them.

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  • To neopixel, or not?

    marcellothearcane08/14/2020 at 15:01 0 comments

    The tone() library says not. Well, the Neopixel library says no to the tone() library.

    A shame really, since I had some spare Neopixels kicking around. Originally I planned to use them, but it looks like I'll have to find some cheap red LEDs instead, and drive them with a transistor.

  • Assembly done

    marcellothearcane08/14/2020 at 11:06 0 comments

    So, I finished my (rat's nest) wiring, and there doesn't appear to be any short circuits when I turn it on.

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  • Faulty display!

    marcellothearcane08/14/2020 at 10:26 0 comments

    It turns out the display from The Pi Hut was faulty, so I returned it for a new one. I also screwed up the illuminated red push switch by blowing the LED inside (idiot!), so I needed a new one of those too.

    I'm soldering wires to various buttons and switches, and the main issue at the moment is making sure I don't glue or fix anything too soon.

  • First look at components

    marcellothearcane07/25/2020 at 22:02 0 comments

    I bought this seven segment display from The Pi Hut. There is a reason, as well as just being cheap.

    It's red, which is good for B&W paper (there will be an option for zero display output however). It also has four decimal point lights, rather than a clock-style colon. I'm going to use this as an indicator for which timer is currently active (there will be four), so I can preset enlarger, dev, stop, and fix timers.

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  • Hello world!

    marcellothearcane07/22/2020 at 17:27 0 comments

    I am making an integrated safelight/timer console, which will have a countdown timer with three preset timer options, and an enlarger switch for controlling that when I need to.

    Neopixels? Overkill? Mais oui! But I have some left over from an old project, so I may as well use them for something.

    I'm envisaging quite a custom light setup, with some lights underneath the worktop as well as along the back edge. You generally need to keep them low and dim around paper, despite its orthocromaticity.

    I've bought bits from The Pi Hut, so hopefully that's all I need. So far the total is around £30.

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