Shipping Forecast Timer

The Circuit Diagram for the Shipping Forecast Timer with a tape counter:-

The circuit above has a tape counter added. This counter is zero's when the cassette is turned on by the timer. When rewinding the tape, the cassette is rewound to the start of the recording and the power is turned off.

I took the photodiodes and microswitch out of an old serial mouse. The cable is useful as well.

I milled a slot in the rewind spool, the one that the tape is taken from.

To mill the slot, I drilled a hole with a model drill through the spool and metal frame below. With the drill still running, slowly rotate the spool to mill out a slot. I made a slot long enough, so that the LED would be on about 25% of the time. The PIC is only running at 8192 instructions per second!

I then mounted the optics either side of the spool, so that the light shines through the hole and the slot. The mouse's wire is a useful supply of light wire, so that little strain is applied to the optics.

The rewind switch was so mounted so the gears that move cause the switch to close when the tape is set to rewind.
The shipping forecast timer is a simple timer circuit. Press the NEXT button to overide the timer.

There are 8 ON times and 8 OFF times stored in the EEPROM of the PIC chip.

These can be changed and the Time set using the buttons SET and NEXT Buttons.
The code has been changed to remove the minute beeps when the tape was powered. These are only sounded when setting the time.