re help with ultra long timing thanks for the resposes as they were all good ideas and i am looking at using a couple of the ideas i recieved in the mail today the spec sheets on the mil spec version of exar s xr timer counter chip it is stable down to c and sucks very little power they show an application for a ultra long time delay up to several years depending on the rc time constant in this application they have two of them cascaded together the reset and trigger pins of both chips are tied together and the timebase of the second chip is disabled in this configuration the output is high when the system is reset when triggered the output goes low and stays that way for a total of x the timing cycle of the first chip the total timing cycle of the two chips can be programmed from to x r x c to x r x c in steps by selecting any combination of the counter outputs to the timer output the beauty of it is the timebase chip would only have to have a uf timing cap and a k resistor for seconds per timing cycle so i can get a maximum of seconds between timing cycles x or about days of course that s much more than i need days but the counter allows for binary steps that can be selected for the output for the pellet puker after the first days and it trips it would reset its self for the next day timing cycle and so forth power is still a problem though a few ideas that you suggested was to bury the electronics in a hole dug in the snow as an insulator and put the pellet puker up on a tower above the estimated snow fall with a solar panel on it to keep a charge on a lithium battery pack i like that idea this thing has to work for at least six weeks for three samples and the gas valves are volts to spit the pellets out onto the snow anyway i ordered the xr s to see what i can do with them should be interesting as long as i m not the one that has to go digging up the pellets in the middle of antartica freezing my buns off thanks again everyone wes
