The Ware for September 2019 is shown below.
Zilog. Now there’s a name that brings back memories!
Thanks to jackw01 for contributing this ware!
The Ware for September 2019 is shown below.
Zilog. Now there’s a name that brings back memories!
Thanks to jackw01 for contributing this ware!
A Pager?
Two slider switches and two rotary switches. Looks like there’s another SSOP-16 chip on the back side between the two rotary switches. Maybe just something like a 74HC595 to multiplex all those signals.
On the lower left–next to what appears to be some kind of power jack–there are two through hole pads with small reliefs cut into the PCB like some part is meant to be soldered in and then bent around the board. Given that I don’t see any type of output (display, sound, LED), I’m guessing the back side of this would be very helpful to see.
My guess would be a pocket metronome or tone generator.
I think this is a universal battery charger.
It has a DC input jack on the left. You can see the pads for two rotary switches through PCB, and those sliding contacts on the front. They’re not cap sense sliders, because you can see the gouges.
Looking at it a little more closely, the right rotary pads are routed to the top set of sliding pads. The bottom set of sliding pads are (I guess) all grounded.
So the left knob selects battery chemistry or voltage, while the right knob selects battery size. If you put the wrong size of battery in, the circuit won’t be completed, and it won’t charge.
I think the connectors to the right are probably for a USB port. I’m picturing something like this: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71DgvlpqPwL._SL1500_.jpg
I’m not a professional, so if it turns out to be a toaster I wouldn’t be too surprised either :D
I think I’m going to revise this slightly. I still think it’s a battery charger. Zilog has app notes out for that.
Given that the slider and the rotary pads are connected, I think they’re redundant. That way the same board can be used for a generic and a ‘pro’ product.
Orient the board one way, and put knobs on the front and the user can set the parameters. Turn the board over the other way and build in a slider and the charger can infer the size of the battery.
At first, I was going to suggest that the copper strips were capacitive sensors, but then I noticed that all of the sections on the bottom strip were actually tied together. Between that and the scratch marks that go all the way across them, I’d say it’s a sliding selector switch.
And there’s enough light shining through the board to show that the two big holes are actually rotary selectors….
All this and a barrel connector for power, on a board small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It looks like a control board for something, but what? And with only 2 wires going off the board…
Old fashioned car hvac control with two knobs and two sliders? Given the Swiss Made, my guess is either a German car, or something more exotic like a Bucher CityCat.
A car control panel, HVAC or other, would have more ways to get signals off the board. This thing doesn’t seem to have much to say to anybody.
The apparent slider switch on the front and the rotary switches on the back is puzzling. It means that this goes into a device with controls on both sides.
Not necessarily, the shaft could go through the board from the front and the wiper disc could be sandwitched between the board and the back case.
The slider switch is amazing!
“We don’t care about make-before-break on the left-hand-side, but we sure need to avoid it on the right-hand contacts… except we’re wracked with indecision so let’s track out for both options and run a drill through…”
Might be an overkill, but could it be the driver and control for those auto-dimming welding masks? Like these?
https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/education-center/publishingimages/articleimages/vikingexternalcontrols.jpg
No idea what it is, but I just love the surface-mount crystal in that retro fuse-like case! Sits perfectly near that Zilog micro.
Shouldn’t the shape of the board, with its nice curved upper edge, tell us something ?
Is this the longest a NTW has gone without a solution?
It looks game controllery, even though I know it isn’t. The asymmetry of the top curve suggests maybe a battery on the right side? Both sliders are well worn along the full track, so it’s not something that’s been left in one state for most of its life.
I feel some kind of thick blue plasticy 90s consumer device (think ZIP drive), but I have no clue what it is. That said, two sliders and two dials? Gotta be a toaster :D
Hey, I already called ‘Toaster’ ;)
One hint that’s left in the picture is “Swiss Made”. Judging less by what can be seen from the circuit and more by guessing towards the econimics, my guess gues towards “something medical”, i.e. something being produced at low (or at least low-ish) volumes and high margins ($/part, or, more correctly: CHF/part). Could it be one of the little controllers next to hospital beds, allowing the patient to adust the height and angle?
Or maybe home automation?
What makes this really hard to guess is the complete lack of an obvious data/sensor input or output. There’s just a pair of wires that could be a supply. There doesn’t seem to be “anything RF”, not even a poor little garage door transmitter – and there isn’t even a transistor that looks like it could handle more than some milli-amps. The power looks like it’s just a pass-through from the connector on the bottom left to the wires on the top right.
Three switches in, nothing out? That’s not even usable for a fancy toy (expensive model railway or similar)…
Strange, strange, strange…
I found the diode star arrangement in the top-left a bit odd, not sue how that circuit is supposed to work. Any ways I put my bet on some kind of wired DC motor controller, like the kind you’ll use on a scale railway controller.
OK, I’m going to take a complete wild guess and say the wires go to a speaker, and it’s some kind of a rhythm generator, two knobs and a slider. Like what used to be built into high-end toy keyboards. Salsa/Disco/Waltz. Batteries hanging off the two connectors at the bottom, but someone cut the wires to the battery holder. So yea, what Willmore said, kind of.
Only where’s the volume control?
12MHz with 1k OTP ROM and 128 Byte RAM. I guess a remote PWM controller for some sort of ventilation system. Maybe detachable from a system and optional remote or wall mounted. The lower left side offers two alternative power sources and/or the plug is for battery charging. There could be MOSFETs on the other side and the copper area under the swiss sticker is extra cooling but there are not enough vias for that. It looks more like a ground shield to me.
My second guess would be a kitchen machine, mixer, blender… Again PWM motor control as a main function. The first three positions of the slider are next to each other and the next 4 have a gap. I guess Speed 1-2-3 and four “special” functions with stop psitions in between like Ice crush, smoothy, etc. Left and right are teh off positions.