This timer SUCKS

I got this timer back in May so that I could help our nephew get off the computer at a reasonable hour, say before two in the morning..  And when I was looking for a timer I thought digital because it might be the perfect device for shutting off the router hence stopping his reason to be on the internet/computer.. We were in another town where  walmart was and I checked the timers out.. The town is bigger and has a biiger walmart and so the selection might be greater than the one we go to weekly.. I had seen on walmart dot com what I was looking for, sort of, and so I thought I'd look.. Truth is the price was the dead give away on this timer, it was under double digit so why not try it.. Most everything I look to buy now in the electronics category gets a thorough looking at on the internet, I check everything about it, but mostly the stars are the thing that I look for, anything with two stars is a buy at your own risk..

This timer seemed easy enough to program.. Hell if it's like the vcr it will be cake.. Most people couldn't program a vcr in the day but I found it extremely easy.. So with this time.. it defies logic on how to program it, mostly because yo program the off time on time first, then the off..  that isn't the hard part, getting the auto on or auto off to be set and why they had the settings in the first place is beyond me.. Auto off seemed redundant but it was the thing that turned it on.. But it wasn't, it was the auto on. No that isn't it either. You see there is so much confusion that I gave up.. But on the webpage where it is sold is a video that explains exactly how to program it.  I have to warn you there is a true tell of a reason to leave this thing on the shelf.. don't even think of buying it...  http://www.walmart.com/ip/Generic-WC2011-Indoor-Digital-Timer-1-Outlet/46683951   Two stars.. I know...  Scroll down to the video and watch how to program this turdtastic thing... Good luck.. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to get how to program it.. It might help if you are but it also might not either..

The other day I tested it to see if I had the time set on it to have it turn something off so I plugged in a small fan and it is set to just about midnight.. Lo and behold it shut the fan off.. Got to be yesterday morning and tested to see if the timer went to the on position and lo and behold....  it didn't... Why not???  Well this timer has a battery backup, it is the main power source to click to on and off, it actually is just a gate for the power to be turned on or off, it uses absolutely NO POWER AT ALL  from the outlet.. This blew me away.. The battery is within there and when I did this before the timer reset itself to zero hours and zero minutes... What this means is it took everything in the battery to run the timer switch.. And it did work fine for a week, I had it set to quarter to eleven and turn back on sat eleven fifteen, figuring hopefully half an hour would frustrate him into giving up.. It also meant I couldn't watch anything either on my roku.. Such a small sacrifice to get him off the computer at a reasonable hour.. He never said a word about it that week.. Why??  He's supposed to be off by ten thirty.. Saying there was an issue with the internet at about 11 would be him admitting he was on later than he is supposed to be..    So Last night I was fed up with this timer thing and decided to pop it open and look for that disc battery.. But how to "pop" it oped.. The screws are triangle heads on them.. WHAT IS A TRIANGLE HEAD???  I've never seen a triangle head before.. i've seen the classic slotted, phillips or a star, but triangle???  What is that about.. I figured it out, its just a fancy way to keep regular people out of their device.. It is actually a very small flat head (slotted) head will do the damages to get these taken off.. Get the thing open and here is where it stays weird.. There is so nearly nothing to this thing.. I've never seen so little electronic board and pieces.. There were capacitors and when I saw the bigger capacitor and couldn't get the board off of the side housing it was resting on I had to try to figure out where the battery was without getting a clear look.. There wasn't a disc battery.. Not that I could tell.. There looked like a place for one but it also looked like an old transister... In a timer.. For whatever the reason.. I concluded that it was a capacitor that was the power source for this thing to work.. A large capacitor (large being relative to this thing is rather small) can hold quite a bit of power but they run out of power fairly fast because they are NOT  a battery, they act like a battery in certain devices.. My old alarm clock had this rather than a battery, and most alarm clocks this is standard, there is no need to put a nine volt battery in them like they did in the early days of digital alarm clocks..  So what did I learn from openimg this timer up?? Absofuckinglutelysquat...  Nothing at all.. it was a waste of time and the timer was a waste of five ish bucks.. Try again loser...  and I will.. Gotta have something to curb the monkeys behaviour..


Badge Henry