You may have guessed, but I used the
ATmega168 (my favorite for the past year or so), along with the
LilyPad 8MHz internal oscillator based Arduino serial bootloader. What is that? The Arduino bootloader is based on the
STK500 serial bootloader. This allows me to reprogram the ATmega168 over a serial link rather than using a hardware programmer. This made the code development cycle a bit easier and would allow Arduino users to use this board with their environment.
So there's the micro, 5V supply, three
painfully bright LEDs, and three
rocker switches. One rocker switch is used for Power (On/Off), the other switches are used to control round length (2 or 3 minutes) and rest time (1 minute or 30 seconds).
Boxing Timer Schematic
I used a LM386 1W audio amplifier to try to increase the speaker volume. It's loud and annoying, but not quite loud enough for a gym environment. My supply voltage is only 9V (12-15V would be better) and I believe the speaker is a bit small for my application.
The LEDs require a max of 80mA so I used a basic NPN
2N3904 transistor circuit. If I used normal 20mA LEDs, I could have driven them directly from the AVR - but these LEDs are
bright.
At the boxing gym, these timers are rarely turned off so I chose to use LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs. Green, yellow, and red indicate where in the round the timer is currently at. The LEDs are
10mm, large, 80mA LEDs. I covered the LEDs up during development, they burned my peripheral vision so badly! For actual use, I used a Dremel tool to roughen the tops of the LEDs in an attempt to disperse some of the light. It helped but the LEDs are still very powerful.
Boxers train on the various bags and equipment for 3 minutes on, 1 minute off, to get their body used to exerting energy for a given length of time. The yellow LED goes off when there is
30 seconds left in the 3 minute round (basically the end of round
warning). These three lights, along with a loud tone lets the boxer
know at what point they are within a given round.
That price markup is painful! Geez. I would be surprised if the parts used in this tutorial (even if you upgraded to a louder speaker) were more than $15 total. Oh and 8 years later as I'm posting this, the price on their website is still $99. Eight friggin years later... you can tell that it's not priced at all for part cost but rather the max people are willing to pay. Geez!
Brilliant I need to make one just about to open a club and need one downside is I havent a clue how nevermind
This is a cool project! I am new to all this but it looks I could do except for the circuit board - did you make that yourself? Would I make a board or use a breadboard instead?
Jerry
Just use a perfboard.
Edit: Sorry for being 3 years late...