So while at work today out by our dumpster I find one of the Resturaunt pagers from Outback I am guessing... so me being the person that I am I decide to keep it in hopes that I can bypass the the frequency required to activate it so at all times it is flashing... I was planning on using this in my next mod if I can figure this small part out. I know next to nothing about wiring and electrics so I came here HOPING that someone knew something about this. Or maybe a cheap way to replicate the the frequency which I found after some surfing to be FM mode transmission operating in UHF (450-470 MHz) ( got no clue that that crap means lol ) The name of the product is Glowster and it is made by Jtech Communications. here are some pixs of it.
i don't know what a resturaunt pager is, but looking at that PCB gives me the idea... it seems like most of that circuit is some sort of radioreciever... so most likely it's just a matter of shorting a pin on an ic or a transistor high or low... however, it's pretty hard to know wich one without any cind of chematic though... edit: try finding all the datasheets for those ic's... that should get you pretty far
Some restaurants give you pagers that light up when they can seat you, that way you can wait outside, and don't have to wait inside to hear them call you. Follow the traces to the leds back to the IC, find the datasheet for that, it shoud tell you which pin is the input.
Restaurants in the states that are very busy use pagers to let customers know when their tables are ready. Each pager is on it’s own frequency and is triggered at the hostess stand from a base station First of all you need to make sure the pager even works. I assume there was a reason it was in the trash. Most of those pagers have a power on cycle that activates the LEDs and motor. Remove the battery momentarily and see if the pager turns on. I would bet the battery is dead. Start with that and then move on to the next problem.
I would assume they all run on the same frequency and recieve rf serial data (either by amplitude modulation or frequency modulation) considering the large number of pagers many restaurants have. A different frequency for each would be less reasonable considering US airwave restrictions. -special [k]
Frequency was the wrong word. Thanks for pointing that out . I agree they all have the same frequency (within the same restaurant) but each have a different Channel Access Protocol (CAP) code. The base station send out the CAP and the pager compares it to the set CAP of the pager.
