Discussion: digital timer

The lovely Rhonda is looking for a timer that can be trained to buzz or beep every minute, kind of like the timers that often get used at the start of o-meets. She intends to use it to enforce discipline at her circuit training classes. Anybody know where to acquire one?

Greg Balter had a good one at the Ansonia Meet. Check with him.

I got it from my Ukrainian friend - Yukhim Shtempler, his next visit to US is not planned yet.
Sports stop-watches can be programmed for that, but they are not too loud.

It's certainly overkill, but it's fairly straightforward to get a laptop or palmtop to do that.

I can easily make a computer program to do that. Do you want me to?

I have made a number of start timers. 9v battery and a small box with a LED display, programmable for 30 sec to 9 min interval. Please contact me directly if you would like info.

My Timex Ironman watch has a countdown timer that can be set for a certain interval. There may be more advanced models that use something other than the alarm at the end of the countdown interval.

A computer program doesn't seem like quite the right thing, because I don't want to find my laptop disappearing into the gym. A homemade start timer might be the right thing, but the critical thing is a loud enough signal to encourage the various participants to switch stations. A wristwatch does this sort of thing, but I think she is looking for something louder (and perhaps not on her wrist). Those timers that are ubiquitous at A meets seem like the right kind of thing.

Charlie, a web search on "interval timers" came up with this, among other things: http://www.ambersports.com/dtimer.html

In the circuit room at my gym, there's one CD player playing music and a second one playing a CD with a voice that says, "change stations" every 40 seconds. I think they have CD's with different time intervals on them. It keeps you moving, but is pleasant on the ear.

in college I recall we had burned a CD with an hour of 1-minute song clips, which was used in conjunction with certain recreational-beverage-consumption games.

Ah, the power hour... so much amusement for those of us "just watching".

OCIN has a small device which one of our ARDF members made. It drifts off by a second every or 15 minutes or so, but has a reset button which can be used to resynchronize it. Cedarcreek could probably tell you more & if Brian would be willing to make some for other clubs. It is a circuit board in a plastic case about the size of a cigarette pack, with a wire connecting it to a small speaker the size of a small cell phone. Those at the New Year's O Fest sprints & recent flying pigs have seen/heard it. It sounds just like a 4 or 5 tone olympic time clock that retails for hundreds of $.

The Brian that Mike mentions already posted as k4bri, above.

We use something like this for field and labwork, from VWR scientific:
http://www.vwrsp.com/catalog/product/index.cgi?cat...
'VWR* Universal Stopwatch/Repeat Timer'