I always enjoyed the Sliders TV show and thought it would be great to have the Original Timer. After all it's made from an old Motorola phone and it's got lots of flashing lights and digital diplays. Who wouldn't want one, right? Now of course, I've got the Timer bug and will have to try to build them all.
So of course the first thing is to find all of the necessary parts. I started looking for one of the phones while I purchased various electronics components. How hard could it be? I really should stop asking that question. This wasn't so hard a few years back but lately they are becoming tricky to find. The phone used was a Motorola T-A-C Ultra Lite. some models of the Motorola T-A-C Lite look exactly the same while some of the Ultra Lites look wrong (side buttons and the font on the main keys). The Motorola DPC550 is similar but will need more work to modify. I recalled a couple of friends had them but of course they had long since vanished. Eventually after looking for a long time I recently tracked a couple down on Ebay. Also to my luck the seller was able to supply me with a working battery and a charging base. Fantastic! I also got a 550 to use for another if I choose.
As well as doing one all from scratch, I got one of Thermalized Plastics' replica phone/timer shells to make one. Some electronics are in the design stage so it's looking very hopeful at last. I might put some static displays in Thermal's kit until something is available for that too. I may make another with just static displays.
More when I can get back to writing this.
Last modified: 26th March 2013