cuckoo clock disappointment

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi All-

Apologies of course if this is in the wrong forum. If so, then asking the administrator to move it.

I purchased several of these little cuckoo clocks for Christmas gifts from Bits and Pieces which came from a Hong Kong manufacturer- they are great little clocks. but they have one really annoying problem.

Link----> http://www.bitsandpieces.com/product/mo … ckoo_clock

That is, they cuckoo on the hour but then you have to actually go round and push a ‘STOP’ button on the back of the clock. Yes, every hour of every day!

Perhaps this is seen as entertaining to the Chinese, but I can tell you anyone I give this clock to will be pulling out the batteries the first day. They are a purchase disaster.

I’m contacting the company Monday but I can bet the bank the salespeople will know nothing, and basically just offer to return.

Howevever- I’m wondering circuit wise, these can’t be very complicated- if there is any possible way to add something to the little circuit board in the clock, to shut it off after the electric cuckoo is triggered once on the hour, aka, fix the broken cuckoo?

Willing to try, the “roof” screws off giving access to the electronics, wondered if this is something that anyone has heard of.

thanks for any help or comments.

2

Actually, pressing the “flower” button in the back will activate the cuckoo once, and it stops, so the board is fully capable of doing this, it just isn’t triggering that circuit on the hour. Instead, it triggers the ‘alarm’ circuit. I’m thinking perhaps this could be fixed just by moving a few wires…it appears to be a tauntingly easy fix.

3

You would have to probe every wire and see what they do. Then draw up a schematic so we would know as well.

4

what do you mean by ‘probe’? The wires are luckily color coded, the two orange wires when connected (this happens when pushing the flower button) will activate the cuckoo once, and it stops.

All I would need, is those two wires to connect at the top of every hour on the digital clock. You can already set it so the “alarm” goes off at the top of every hour.

If there was some kind of Arduino I could attach to the digital clock board, that would close that circuit aka connect the two orange wires just once every hour, it would be a done deal.

5

jeffpas:
what do you mean by ‘probe’? …the two orange wires when connected (this happens when pushing the flower button) will activate the cuckoo once, and it stops.

And how would we know that without you telling us?

All I would need, is those two wires to connect at the top of every hour on the digital clock. You can already set it so the “alarm” goes off at the top of every hour.

I can see this working for a few days, but the clock wouldn’t be as accurate as the digital and would need adjusting.

If there was some kind of Arduino I could attach to the digital clock board, that would close that circuit aka connect the two orange wires just once every hour, it would be a done deal.

Really don’t think you need an Arduino for this. Use a DMM and find out why the “test” button turns off the cuckoo. It could be as easy as changing some connections…

6

jeffpas wrote:what do you mean by ‘probe’? …the two orange wires when connected (this happens when pushing the flower button) will activate the cuckoo once, and it stops.

And how would we know that without you telling us?

That’s why I told you of course. As far as not knowing without being told… my thoughts exactly :slight_smile:

But I attached pictures and ask away anyone, I don’t know what information you want.

It appears by DMM, you meant a Digital Multimeter? Something like this:

http://www.craftsman.com/craftsman-mult … 3482141000

I am wondering how you would use this to determine why the test button turns off the cuckoo.

I see exactly what you are saying about changing a few connections or wires. I think that is the case. All that it needs really is for the hourly trigger of the alarm to be swapped with an hourly trigger of the test button, then the clock would work as it is supposed to work, not in the deranged way the Chinese manufacturer created it. Just looking for someone’s advice who more regularly works with electronics, how they would approach this.

As far as an Arduino not being involved, this brings me back to my hello statement: “Apologies of course if this is in the wrong forum. If so, then asking the administrator to move it.”. I am pretty new to Arduinos… but I do have one on hand I had bought for a small project a few years ago that never panned out. But, it may be it could have been of help here, I just, didn’t know.

7

Well the company wrote back as expected and offered nothing but to return for refund. The factory made no reply (Bits and Pieces refused to give me any contact information, but the maker’s name was printed on the bottom of the clock so I finally found them online).

The infamously secret O’Smile Industrial Ltd of Castle Peak, Hong Kong, also proud makers of the “Swearing Finger” on Amazon (note, there is no Contact available for them on Amazon, either)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Swearing-Fing … B004Q6UGEY

I finally found an email address through a Chinese wholesale site hktdc.com but they ignored my pleas.

This looks like a bust.

Got to love how American companies, unable to manufacture anything on their own anymore have just resorted to hiding their Chinese suppliers from people.

Wish I was experienced at electronics… I’d love to get these working they’d make great gifts. Well now we know why they’re marked down so much :confused:

8

Use a Multimeter to determine what signals are being sent when you push the “flower” button. Use the DMM to also find out what signals are used when the clock hits on the hour.

As of now, we don’t even know what voltage the clock runs on. How many batteries are in the clock? What kind of batteries?

Your images don’t help us because we can’t see the PCBs (if there is any) and even if we could, it’s hard to determine where a trace goes with an image. You can try to take out the electronics and organize them where we could see everything. Then try to take a high resolution image so we could try to make a schematic. We also would need to know what IC chips are on the PCB (if there are any).

Without any detailed info, we are just guessing…

9

Let me start with this… because I’m super new to this… although I don’t think this is a very complicated device to someone who knows electronic boards.

There are just two chip boards I can see. A small green one that ‘governs’ the clock, and a little brown one behind the 3 yellow buttons on the other side.

There are 3 buttons. flower (TEST), SET, and MODE.

The two orange wires are connected to the flower button on the brown board, which activates the cuckoo and stops, or stops the alarm once started (which goes on forever otherwise).

You can press the MODE button to make a little bell appear on the LCD display, and then the cuckoo goes off every hour. That’s all well and good, but it never STOPS. Essentially, its like the alarm going off every hour.

Are all digital clock boards essentially the same? Here is the the green circuit board connected to the clock, with the colored wires coming out of the top. A brown wire, white wire, blue, red, and two green wires. There are 17 black ribbon wires coming out of the bottom. Those go directly to the clock LCD display.

As of right now, we know the two orange wires which come from the mechanism below, when connected, activate the cuckoo just once.

That is what happens when the “flower” button is pressed.

All this needs to do, is connect the two orange wires at the top of every hour.

The green board is already capable of doing ‘something’ at the top of every hour- setting off the alarm.

The clock runs on 3 1.5 volt AA batteries, which are in the bottom of the clock.

What other questions do you have?

10

All the wires. There are 10 in total.

To the right in this picture, you can see the little brown circuit board behind the 3 yellow buttons.

The wires lead up to the green circuit board for the clock.