Anatomy of The Clapper

While helping clean out a friend's apartment who was moving, I found two amazing gems: a "Clapper", and a "Windmere - Shower Radio". The Shower Radio actually looks pretty good. It's in our guest bathroom now. The Clapper though, it's pretty rough. This page will be dedicated to the story of reverse engineering and trying to fix this cheesy, but pure, example of engineering for consumer electronics.

This is the Clapper as I found it. It's pretty dirty and has been written on with a red marker. Not only that, but it doesn't work. Clapper01_1024x768.jpg	Open it up, and look at the circuit board (heatsink has also been removed). What do we notice right away? There is no transformer and no relay, but there are CMOS ICs! Wow, very clever corner cutting! Clapper02_1024x768.jpg
Actually, the underside of the circuit board looks like pretty good quality. Clapper03_1024x768.jpg	It's fixed now. The Triac was shorted. Now it controls the ceiling lamp above my couch. When I was clapping to test it out Barron (my dog) got mad at me for clapping so much. He started barking at me. That started flashing the light. Then he got mad at the light for flashing on and off, so he started barking at the light. It was pretty hilarious. Clapper04_1024x768.jpg

Clapper_Schematic.pdf
The schematic is done, and I still don't see exactly how the power supply works. Notice that VCC of the CMOS is connected directly to the hot side of the 120 VAC. The part I'm still not sure about is how hot R1 and R2 must get - or does C1 do something crafty with power factor stuff to make a voltage drop with very little wasted watts? I really liked being an electrical engineer.

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