Electronic – shutting off power to circuit after a short time from an alarm clock

powertimer

I am helping with a middle school project.
The idea is to power a 3 V vibrating motor for about 10 seconds after the alarm goes off.

The cheapest way so far I have found is to get a dual alarm clock and replace the buzzer with the motor. Unfortunately, since the alarm goes on for 30 minutes, or until manually shut down, the motor runs for that long. I just need it to run for about 10 seconds. What can I add/put between the clock and the motor so the power shuts off after the period of time till the next alarm event?

Second, if there's a way to do this with some kind of circuit timer, instead of an alarm clock, that would be ideal.

The goal is to be able to set 2 events within a 24 hours period (every 12 hours, or twice a day); when the even happens, it should power my 3 V vibrating motor for about 10 seconds and then turn off.

Best Answer

I'm starting to feel like an old engineer suggesting these so frequently recently, but you can use a 555 timer in monostable operation. When triggered (by the alarm), these maintain high signal for a set amount of time and do not accept additional triggers during that time.

You might need to make this as two stages if the original alarm signal continues to set one off when triggered (like if the alarm signal is the driving signal for a buzzer). The way that works is one is high for the length of the buzzer, accepting no other triggers, the output of the first stage triggers the second, which is monostable for the length of the vibration motor. Basically this allows both to be triggered on the same edge, but the shorter duration one can not be re-triggered until the longer duration has run out.