Countdown Timer

This is a project created by Francesca Branch, Jane Gordon, Alix Ross and Susan Scott for PLX classes 2008.

Idea

The original idea was to create a countdown timer similar to those that you see on a bomb on television.

Process

After much thought we decided it would be easiest to get a kit from Maplin. There were two that we could have chosen, one being a countdown timer the other being an alarm clock that we would try and reverse...After much deliberation it was decided that we should attempt to modify the alarm clock as this would teach us more about how to use different components.

The kit was assembled by soldering and once everything was in place we tested it to make sure it worked. We then tried to think of a way to reverse the timer, this involved ideas such as gates and a different type of chip. However having gone back to Maplin to see if they had a chip to change the direction we found they were rather unhelpful and therefore did not want to buy a chip which could quite possibly not work.

Having decided that we could not make it work as a countdown timer we chose to leave it as an alarm clock.