Street lighting time-switch repair and exploration.

I make the resistor across the crystal 10MΩ at 1% , 50ppm. My dad used to have one of these sorts of timers he salvaged from work - I was always fascinated by it. It's nice to finally understand how it works.

Best bet might be to upload it to youtube and send a link. Or it could be emailed if it is a small file.

Big Clive

But not as annoying. I can only take AvE in small doses.

Andrew Sloniger

Hey clive is there a way to send you a short video

I remember these from my youth. It was used as a time clock on the central heating. State of art at the time (basic version). I also recall continual pressing of the red button as no one could agree on heating or saving money as a priority.

You can tell by the squeaky noise it's brass!

Phil Collins

Leviton makes an interesting electronic light switch which allows for you to enter nearest latitude and longitude to calculate the on off time automatically. You can also have it turn on/off early, etc. Replaces regular light switches

Vaughn B.

I was thinking "wouldn't you want different offsets for different parts of the world?", then I noticed the marking on the face: "54°N". I'm guessing it's just different cams for different latitudes. I doubt there's one for 0°, since the day length doesn't vary there.

John Rehwinkel

AvE-ish. Nice! Wonder if he gets... Clive'y?

The Griffiths Family

That's mainly because the filming area isn't deep enough for the bigger items.

Big Clive

Not sure why, but I love when it starts outside and then you go to the bench for a teardown.

Andrew Sloniger

Nice to see they didn't change the switching mechanism. That never failed.

ugh.. Synchronous motor and much simpler.

Back in the 1970s I was fixing these things.. Actually then they were just driven by a sym

Good to know that Sangamo are still making timers in Port Glasgow AND they still make that one you have in this video! £175...

I support you just so you can loosen that nut for me!

Robert Sanges

Multiple scenes with some outdoor and some indoor, the Cannes festival is really infecting everybody :)

Nicolas Raynaud

Let's just say that I need more shelves.

Big Clive

Does this have any allowance for leap years? If not it will run very slightly slow, and eventually have to be corrected. That would be much easier to design into an electronic device.

Stephen King

I'm interested to know what you do with all these things when you've taken them apart? Do they get thrown away or are there hundreds of miscellaneous industrial / Chinese parts running projects in your house? :)

Joseph Farthing

In Surrey, BCCanada and around the rest of Metro Vancouver, they tend to use a fairly "elegantly" designed pole on switch box base set up using the photocell option on the lamp itself and feeding that down to a contactor in the base that will branch out to the rest of the street lights in the neighbourhood. While here is calgary, they use a photocell, but they then drill a hole and strap on a small box containing a photo cell and likely a small contactor part way up the pole. These ones in calagry seem to fail more often possibly due to crap photocells or crap contractors and/or possibly damaged underground wiring. Lots of wiring flown from light head to light heads here for repairs likely due to the freeze thaw cycles.

Vaughn B.

I am surprised they are using this relatively complex and likely expensive solar timer in place of a simple photo cell and perhaps a contactor. I would imagine this is to squeeze out some addition energy saving. Lots of Sangamo power meters over here and likely there too bolted to the side of houses.

Vaughn B.