Optonicus Poorlius....



I can clearly remember the sheer excitement at receiving my first Optonic bite alarm in the mid to late 80's. My dad bought it for me for my birthday and I was over the moon to have finally joined "the big boys" with my new addition.... I wanted 2, but they were pretty pricey (£40-50 in the mid 80's as a guess?) I had to wait a while until I was lucky enough to get another one...

AN OPTONIC COMPACT - HIGH TONE

Note LED position... Odd! No adjustment. Switch on and fish!

AN OPTONIC SPECIAL COMPACT - HIGH TONE

Single LED and a volume option... Getting there....

AN OPTONIC SUPER COMPACT

Ding Dong! Run LED, Latching LED, Tone & Volume controls. Yipee!

The model I got was the SUPER COMPACT. There were also the options of SPECIAL COMPACTS (volume control and one LED) and COMPACTS , which didn't have anything in the way of adjustability of tone and/or volume and only one LED in an odd position.... (See above pics) I think you just had to purchase high or low tone and that was your lot.... Anyhoo, I digress.

I have happily used these alarms for the past 25 years. They have never let me down until recently (more on that later)

The Optonic alarm surfaced in the early 1980's and was made by Efgeeco (Frank Goddard & Co.). This alarm soon became the "must have" and thousands of units were sold. It really was a breath of fresh air compared to the old, unreliable alarms that anglers had suffered up until their arrival.

The Optonic works on the principal of the line resting against a V section plastic roller, which is housed within the alarm body. A shaft is attached to this wheel which has a vane arrangement pushed onto it. As the line is moved by a running fish, the plastic vanes rotate between an infrared light source and sensor within the casing. As the vanes pass through, a piezo buzzer is sounded and a pair of LED's are activated - one showing the run as it happens in red and the other, which is a latching LED which lights green. (Super Compact only) There were two vanes supplied with the original alarm. A 2 blade vane and a 4 blade vane which improved sensitivity. Other options became available as time went on.

The alarm ran on a 9V PP3 battery, which was accessed by splitting the alarm in half. This was achieved by removing the 2 small nuts and bolts at the top of the alarm and the large plastic nut and bolt which attached it to the bankstick or pod. The battery was attached via a clip. The spare vane was also housed inside the casing (see my pics later on)

The front of the Super Compact housed a volume control, a tone control and 2 LED's as mentioned previously. It appears that the super compacts had a clip on fascia. Something I only discovered when stripping mine for surgery recently. Maybe this is a mod to allow the manufacturers to use a standard body for all options of alarm? An after thought maybe? Who knows..?

The power switch was on the bottom face along with a 2.5mm jack to allow the alarms to be fitted to sounder boxes... something I’ve never tried to do. I may look into this at a later date.

Audible signalling is provided by a 31mm diameter Piezo element. This is a difficult spare to find. More on that later.

One complaint with the alarms was that they weren't loud enough (they seem pretty loud to me - maybe alcohol fuelled fishing sessions made them harder to hear?). This is something which companies such as DELKIM seized upon. They made various modifications to alarms including fitting much larger GPO speakers to the units for more oomph. This eventually landed DELKIM in court and the modifying of original units was halted.

Battery changing is a bit of a pain on the compact units. There is no warning of low battery level either.

The alarms sat upon a fork type threaded adaptor made of plastic. The nut at the bottom of the alarm was tightened to pinch the alarm onto the fork. A fierce run could shift the alarms on their fork and even knock them off completely if the nut wasn't sufficiently tightened. Again, modified parts became available to combat the Optonic's "niggles" as time went on. One of these mods was "ears". They were basically plastic extensions, which fitted to the top of the alarm to prevent the rod from being moved out of the vee of the alarm by high winds or a screaming sidewards run.

　

As they say, a picture says a thousand words, so I’ve popped some pictures of my super compact on here for all to see. I hope it may be of use to anyone out there who still owns one of these great little alarms and would like to revive it for old time's sake... If not, send it to me and I’ll happily give it a loving home.

MY POORLY OPTONIC.

After 25 years of faithful service, my first super compact gave up the ghost whilst fishing overnight at Felthorpe Lakes.

All of the circuitry and adjustability was still fine, but the alarm had a very low audible output. No amount of cleaning or spraying with electrical cleaner improved matters, so it was time to strip her down for surgery.

The unit is pretty simple to strip out. Firstly remove the nuts and bolts from the top and bottom of the unit as per a battery change.

This allows you to split the alarm in half and access all of the magical parts that scare you half to death in the middle of a night session.

The vane/wheel assembly just lifts out.

The battery unclips.

The main power switch is held in with 2 small screws on the outside of the casing.

The main circuit board is held in place with 2 small screws, one top and one bottom.

The potentiometers and the LED's are butted up against a spongy material inside the alarm. I assume this is for waterproofing. Gentle persuasion will get this board shifting.

BUT

Don't forget that the piezo wires are connected to the circuit board. If you wish to take it out completely, then you will need to unsolder the red and black piezo wires from their posts on the circuit board. The piezo wires are much thinner than the battery wires. If you unscrew the power switch from the body, then you do not need to unsolder the battery wires.

The entire circuit board, switch and battery clip will then lift out of the alarm body.

If you wish to access the piezo, then this can be done by unclipping the panel from the front of the alarm (see pic of panel below)

The piezo elements are quite hard to find here in the UK. They are 31mm diameter and appear to be just a circle of metal with 2 wires soldered on. I won’t go into geeky, scientific stuff to try to explain how they work, but suffice to say that mine had given up the ghost. I managed to confirm that it was the piezo by mounting the suspect board into the other good alarm I had and soldering the good piezo’s wires onto it. It worked like a charm, so the board of the suspect alarm is totally fine.

I managed to find a supplier of 31mm piezos via a well-known auction site. The seller is based in the USA, but around £6 sees 5 of the little blighters winging their way to me ready for some soldering fun.

I will update this blog as and when they arrive.

Cheers for reading. Hope it wasn't too dull.

Jon

　

　

　MY BOXED SUPER COMPACT

　

　THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THINGS.

T 'OTHER SIDE.

CASING SPLIT. YOU CAN SEE THE VANE ASSEMBLY AND SPARE VANE.

A BARE FRONT HALF. HOLES FOR POTS, LED'S AND PIEZO. BATTERY HELD BY FOAM.

A FRONT FACE WITH THE "PANEL" POPPED OFF. IT SEEMS THE TWO HALVES ARE IDENTICAL WHEN MOULDED, BUT ARE THEN MODDED TO SUIT.

THE PANEL THAT'S CLIPPED ONTO THE SUPER COMPACT



THE CIRCUIT BOARD SHOWING LED'S AND TONE/VOLUME CONTROL POTS.

MORE OF THE CIRCUIT BOARD. SENSING COMPONENTS ON LEFT HAND SIDE

THE BOARD..... AGAIN.

HERE'S THE INFRARED LIGHT SOURCE AND THE RECEIVER. NEAT EH?

VERY EXCITING TO A KID IN THE 1980'S I CAN ASSURE YOU

BACKSIDE OF BOARD.

I BUZZED ALL COMPONENTS OUT WITH A FLUKE MULTIMETER.

EVERYTHING ON BOARD WAS FINE AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY!

THE OFFENDING DEVICE. A 31MM DIAMETER PIEZO ELEMENT.

CHEAP, BUT HARD TO FIND IN THIS SIZE IN THE UK.


AND NOW FOR THE UPDATE!

I received the 5 off piezo discs and duly soldered the original (hair-like) wires onto it.

Positive is the smaller, inner ring on the piezo. Negative is the outer ring.

I soldered it to the main board and BINGO we're off. Simple as that! Loud too! Even louder once mounted back inside the case.

I cobbled the unit back together and tested before popping the two halves of the case together. All good....

Once screwed together and admired, I went for the good old final test....

nothing.....

nada....

rien.....

nowt....

Open the case and test it....... Fine!

Close case up again. Zilch.

Turns out that the infrared emitter and receiver were kaput. No! I thought they were fine! That'll explain the highly annoying false indications on my last night fishing trip..... Hmmm.

I did some research on the net and phoned a nice chap in Essex who gave me some clues and offered to do the job if I struggled.

I was buggered if I was giving up now.

I zipped to Maplin on my trusty lambretta and purchased the following...

CH10L (Transmitter)

£0.99

CH11M (Receiver)

£0.99

The ginger, lanky geek in the shop was top-class geeky & brilliant. I wondered if he'd ever kissed a girl... I felt confident he hadn't.

As a note, the infrared transmitter has some red marks on it's legs. Otherwise they look pretty similar, apart from having opposite legs (i.e anode and cathode are in opposite positions when laid side by side)

The two little "pips" on the components must face each other and be reasonably in line.

I de-soldered the old components carefully and then soldered the new ones into place. The legs of the old components are bent under the board to secure them a bit better. Make sure these are straightened out before trying to yank them out with your other half's eyebrow tweezers.

Soldering went quite well. I bent the tags of the legs under the board like the old components too. The sensors were around 10mm apart.

I switched her on..... nothing. Then I remembered it needing to be in the dark. Covered the sensors with my hand and BOOM! We're off. Nice loud alarm.

To say i'm happy is an understatement. There was no way I was giving up on these alarms. I hold them dearly to my heart as they meant SO much to me when I was a tiny teeny.

I've recently discovered i'm off to France for "Le Carpe Session" with three great friends in October..... The Optonics will be coming with me for sure.

I've enjoyed this little project. It's a good feeling when you fix something for a few quid isn't it?



THE OLD SENSORS - 25 YEARS OF SERVICE!



THE NEW SENSORS IN PLACE

QUITE A GAP, BUT WORKS PERFECTLY!



ALL BACK TOGETHER AND READY FOR SEALING UP