electronic boards help????

[Anonymous]

To Whomever,

   I am trying to make a board that can control a 5 groups of lights that would all come on at different times.  This circuit has a light with 12-24v lights. 

group 1 say comes on in 30seconds

group 2 comes on in 80s

group 3 comes on in 130s

group 4 comes on in 180s

group 5 comes on in 230s

The purpose of this circuit is to make a group of street lights come on at different times in a line up.  I have a average mind on electronics and have put some boards together that are simple.  So I need a little help so i can make my idea work.  I have tried to put it together before but ran into some problems.  Any how i was thinking a switch would turn the the boards on which in turn lead to the lights.  Now on the board i thought that 5 555timers would work to get the lights to come on at differnt times.  A adjustable resistor would allow for how long it takes for the light to go on and a capacitor would allow for how long the light would stay on(about 8 hours).  I was thinking of putting the board on the ground side of the wire so the board dont have 12-24v flowing through it to burn the board up, but not sure if that would work.  Well if anyone has any ideas or knows of someone who could help with the idea that would be fantastic.  I was also thinking of using a relay but would like if i could leave it out cause they are expensive lol.   well anyhow post your ideas or thoughts that would be great.  If anything i said dont make sense write me and i see if i can clearify what i said. gla 

[lionelsoni]

You could use something like a chain of Klixon sequencers.  These are thermal relays used for delaying the turn-on of fans or electric-furnace elements in the HVAC industry.  A standard operating voltage is 24 volts.  The simplest kind has a two-terminal heater which causes a two-terminal SPST (form A) switch to close after a delay.  You would wire them so that the contact of each sequencer turns on a group of lights and the heater of the next sequencer.  Klixon was owned by Texas Instruments and now by Sensata.  Here is a description of their products:

http://www.sensata.com/files/hvactherm-600.pdf

I believe White-Rodgers also makes similar devices.  If you want to try this, just go to an HVAC distributor and see what they have in stock.

[trigtrax]

Go to Radio Shack and order their Engineering notes on the 555 timer. You'll need relays in latching mode to cascade the lights and the turn on of each light group will start the next timer.

[Anonymous]

You would need 5 relays and 5 delay on make timer modules, cost would be about $90. You would also need a seperate 20 volt tap from a ZW or such transformer to power the relays and timers. I dont know about shutting them off after 8 hours. For that you would need a 6th timer with an hour interval mode,that would cost about $25 more. BTW if you make a 555 timer circuit you would still need a relay with each one.

Dale Hz