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These Donnerzeien light timers were commonly used in communal stairways or garages to control lighting. Lights are turned on pressing a push button and remain lit for a while, then shut off automatically. These light timers were taken out of service and no documentation appears to exist, they are fully electronic and built around late 80s or early 90s.
Front and back views:
The white knob sets time interval to keep lighting on, it ranges
from 3 seconds to 12 minutes.
Side view: it has a detachable socket on the back:
For installation its socket is detached and four screw terminals show up. It has two perforations to screw the socket in a wall and a clamp for 35mm DIN rail 46277-3.
For disassembly we pull the bakelite cover that is glued and unscrew its four plug tips:
I found two different electronic circuit designs across the units I got. They differ in a Voluntary shut off function activated by holding the push button for some seconds, that lets you switch off lights before set time has elapsed.
Below is a circuit diagram for models without the Voluntary shut off function. The first drawing is the base board and the second one is the vertical board:
Integrated circuit 4001 is a Toshiba TC4001 and is supplied ground (Masa) to pin 7 and supply (Alim) to pin 14 (not shown in schematic). Dotted lines across 4MEG7 resistors represent solder pads available on the board that can be jumped with solder and presumably used for calibration during manufacture.
Circuit diagram for units with Voluntary shut off:
Documented on July 2014 by Jeroni Paul.
Copyright © 2014 Jeroni Paul.