After getting the Display Controller and Button Controller working, it was now time to work on the enclosure for the Shop Timer.

Since this is going to be in the shop (garage) I wanted something pretty heavy-duty. Since I have a lot of 1×4 material on hand, I built a simple box using it and the existing timer face (which is made of 5mm plywood). Here is the end result:

It’s about 13 3/4″ wide and 6″ tall. The corners are simple butt joints, held in place with two 1 1/4″ screws at each joint.

On the inside I fastened the display control board with a couple of small wood screws. I mounted the board on top (upside down) to avoid dust buildup on the board.

Since the control box needs to be sturdy and visible, I made it out of some more 1×4 lumber and painted it bright Halloween Orange.

Once the paint dried, I installed and soldered up the three arcade buttons. One each for: Start, Stop, and Reset. In this photo I’ve finished the soldering and crimped on the Molex connectors. The buttons are plugged into their controller board for testing.

Things tested out fine! No debounce problems and everything worked as expected (thank goodness).

With the circuit and buttons tested, it was now time to finish the assembly of the button control box. First I fastened on the back and then mounted the control board to it:

Note that I removed the bottom (right side) of the box and made a little notch in it — big enough to fit the control cable through. I looped the wires (they are braided and heat shrunk at intervals) through a toroid. The toroid prevents RF interference (unlikely) and provides some strain relief (much more likely). The board is fastened to the back using a couple of wood screws. The control box only has the data lines, power is being fed at the display (though the circuits are set up so that you can provide source power at either point).

Now all the buttons get connected via the Molex connectors:

Finally, everything gets stuffed into the box and the front cover gets screwed back into place:

You can see in the above photo that I have the back board overlapping a bit and a hole is drilled into it. That’s for hanging the controller around the shop.

After this was done I tested everything again. Still working!

Finally, I rigged up an old wall wart (a 5V one I had around — you can go to 15 V) and wired in a connector. So, I have the control lines and the power lines feeding into the display portion. The control lines then drop down to the button box.

Here’s the final unit, installed in the shop:

For now I’ve placed it above one of our shelving units — it’s right near the ceiling. The control box is sitting on one of the shelves (actually hanging from a screw I drove into one of my heavy-duty wooden book boxes).

It works like a charm and is in the middle of the shop, so it will be easy for either of us to us.