Any electronics gurus on here?

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Andrew_K99

Andrew_K99

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Joined
Feb 17, 2011
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Waterdown, ON, Canada
We have a baby swing that plays sounds, but the sounds are annoyingly on a timer and stop after about 7 minutes. The swing continues until turned off.

Our son needs to music to sleep and I'd love to be able to override this apposed to running over and hitting the reset button.

Anyone know if this would be easy to override? Could the wires that go to the reset button be spliced and cause it to bypass the timer function?

If anyone can help my wife and I'd be very appreciative!

Thanks,
Andrew
 
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We always used a vacuum cleaner...sounds odd try it.

It used to just shut down our daughter, she would be in one of her seriously ****y moods. Drop her butt in the swing, fire up the vac and whammo...down and quiet.

Something about the white noise did it.

wish it still worked...she's 12 now
 
Without seeing the schematics, I would guess it is a set program inside the control chip that plays through the ROM (read only memory) that was programed with the system.

Some marketing person decided that 7 min was the optimum and an engineer recorded 7 mins of music and programed it into the onboard memory.

Several ways to address this, make a timer circuit that runs for 6.9 min and connect it the the reset pin so it resets the music before it stops. (hard , messy)

Another solution is to get an ipod and set it to play for the length of time the swing takes to run down, or longer. Easy, can select what music to play, can use the ipod later when your daughter gets older.

I would opt for the 2nd option.:biggrin:
 
build a small 555 astable timer and connect that to the reset wires. very easy to build and a lot cheaper than an ipod. Granted you will need to be able to get access to the reset wires but if you can its very simple. 555 ICs run off 6-15V DC so it should be within the range the current setup works on.
If you want a schematic, drop me a PM.
 
Andrew_K99 said:
We have a baby swing that plays sounds, but the sounds are annoyingly on a timer and stop after about 7 minutes. The swing continues until turned off.

Our son needs to music to sleep and I'd love to be able to override this apposed to running over and hitting the reset button.

Anyone know if this would be easy to override? Could the wires that go to the reset button be spliced and cause it to bypass the timer function?

If anyone can help my wife and I'd be very appreciative!

Thanks,
Andrew
Click to expand...

Probably isn't going to hurt anything to just short the reset, but can't guarantee that since it depends on the timer circuit. You could try it if you are willing to risk needing a new circuit which may not be available. If I were trying this I'd add a second switch to keep the normal reset in operation when the switch is not set to bypass it (real simple and easy to do).

I imagine it runs off a 555 circuit built into the board and could probably be modified to run as long as you want but would require some electronics knowledge and skill to do that, particularly if it uses surface mount electronic components.
 
Can you open the box with the circuit in it and give us a picture?

If its discrete components (555's) then it would be one approach. If its a low cost microcontroller, its another approach. Also, as said above, surface mount vs. through hole manufacturing it will affect the solution.

I would guess the reset is a momentary on activation - when you push the button everything stops until you release the button. If so, then splicing the reset wires - shorting out the switch will put the music playback in permanent reset.

A timing circuit spliced into the reset line would work as long as it was momentary on _/"""\_ or ""\__/"" depending if it is active high or active low. You will have to determine which you need.

This is why I mentioned it might be hard / messy there are several variables that are hard to determine remotely and so providing a solution is a bit problematic.

If you don't want to use an ipod, try a radio tuned to a station she likes.
 
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