Here's something interesting and quite perplexing. I Have to say, many years ago, like decades ago I bought an air freshener like this and it's motorized. It takes a D cell battery and inside is a fan. Let me just pop this in and you insert the aroma cartridge in here.

it says housed on it. That's interesting because I did see some that might still be being sold in America and when you turn on, there's a fun insight and it blows their room out. but it Cycles on and off presumably to make that well, to control the amount of Aroma and also to make the battery last a decent length of time and I have time this. The fan runs for about uh, five minutes which is quite a long time and then it's on for 15 minutes.

But I did notice that if you turn it on and off, it seems to glitch it and it fires the fan in little bursts until it kind of catches up and drops back into sync again. So let's open it. This isn't a Euler room in here. It's actually isopropyl alcohol because I washed this one out.

This is one. I just got off eBay just because I wanted to check it out. it was a used one and I was kind of interested to see what the secretary was like inside. and I can see the circuitry here with what looks like a standard chip.

Let's pop them in it now. while looking online I did find uh, a Walmart listing for this I don't know if there's still some the devil they don't sell in the UK Why is that not coming out there? It goes. but I've not seen these in the UK for a very, very long time, but that's not uncommon. There's also another air freshener that appears to be sold in America but is no longer available in the UK and it was a little tiny wisp unit that took the double A Oh, that comes apart quite easily.

So um, I don't know if this is I Don't think this is still sold in the UK might get a clue of the age off the circuit board? I'm not really sure. So the circuit board comes out like this: There is a chip, All right. Tell you what. I'm going to take a picture of the circuit board and we'll reverse engineer it just to see what makes this tick.

and if it uses a standard component or is it a dedicated chip one moment, please. and resume. Uh, Interesting, interesting secretary. Now I don't know where to start here.

It turns out they may still be selling these, but as New Old Stock it's an obsolete product. The whole Oust brand has been moved on. and that's interesting because if you take a look at some products, here is the Earwig Air Freshener. I Have a vintage Haze air freshener that I think it might be the precursor to this one.

It doesn't have the adjustable intensity fragrance thing, which either has little louvers that restricts airflow or adjust the heating element up and down. but uh, this one. You actually screw the thing in and it fits even the new versions the ones you can buy these days. Uh, that's odd I Want to take this one apart just to see if the constructions change much of the heater, but on the other hand, that would be almost like sacrilege to air freshener collectors.

But having said that, by taking mine apart, it would save you home to take yours apart. I Shall put this to the side that is very, very stinky I might put some of that in here and just, uh, use it I Don't fill my ear with uh, toxic chemicals I tend to just basically, uh, just have a little width of a room every so often. Anyway, the back of the circuit board is well labeled. the battery connections are quite solidly mounted on here, with probably lead-based solder.

Then that's fine. That's good. The motor is pressed into glow Packers to hold it snugly, and then little ratchet clamps to hold it in. and there is human detrius and the little fan itself well marked in the back.

It's got things like test B Mode B I Don't know why it keeps referring to as B uh I'll Focus down this because uh, it almost suggests there's two sections to this chip. Maybe there are two sanctions to the chip, but if we look at the top, here is the circuit board. We've got a smattering of capacitors. I Should have actually noted down the value of those capacitors.

I Shall note down the value of capacitors before we go into the schematic, but it's marked Beagle 608318083 I kind of drew a blank I Typed in 683-18083 and found an Alibaba seller selling what look like obsolete trips which may be it. but I Also noticed that an eBay listing in America showed one of these units and it said vintage unit or showed it from different angles and on the back it's still at all these markings, but a blob chip instead of the uh, actual the dill chip. Um, right. Tell you what, before we go to the schematic: I'm sure there's a diode across the motor, there's a transistor for switching the motor, there is a decoupling capacitor, and then there's uh, three other capacitors in the circuit, one possibly for reset.

and then there's a very high value 240k resistor which looks as though it's setting timing which I think is based on binary given the sort of on to off cycle the switch. this green layer is an anti-friction layer they've printed on I Thought they might have just done it with a screen print, but they've put an extra layer on because the switch is literally just this little springy metal Arrangement that slides backwards and forwards on that and goes on to these two plated pads in the circuit board. The circuit board. itself seems quite good quality.

Actually, it doesn't look like generic synthetic resin bonded paper, though it might be. It might be fiberglass, but I don't think it is I think it is a better quality Srbp. Anyway, I'm going to uh before I show you the schematic. I'm going to note down the values of these capacitors.

That's what I should have done before one moment, please. Well, that was easy. They're all 104. one zero and four zeros 100 000 picofard is 100 nanofarad for each and every single one of these.

So looking at the chip, this one is marked in the circuit board as reset This one I'm not really sure, it just gives it a capacitor number C3 This one was labeled as C1 and C2 connection points and I'm guessing that there's an oscillator built in here that you could Basically, if you used a lure resistor. here, it is using that thing where there's an inverter gate. Let me see if I can just doodle this and inverter gate which has the resistor going to the input usually Schmidt trigger and then a capacitor to the zero volt rail. And what happens is that the output that changes uh, seal output is positive because the input's negative initially.

when you start up, it will slowly charge that capacitor up from the output via this resistor over a given period of time and then the output will change State when it reaches a threshold and then it will start discharging capacitor and that is a basic oscillator. then I Reckon that's going to a binary binary counter in here and it's being divided down and gated. I Think this is a dedicated chip purely for these air fresheners I don't have all the other pins are for I Don't know there's no data in this I Think you'd have to experiment by finding out a pins and maybe setting them to different levels. Not sure maybe it can.

you can change that timing, but it certainly it appears to be binary. Uh. one on three off for the fan? certainly. I Didn't really leave it running for ages because that's quite a long time.

it takes just sitting waiting for a fan to stop, but that's more or less it when. So when the boundary counter ungating the logic applied to it detects it's time for the fan to run, it pulls the input to this Uh PNP transistor low and that transistor then turns on that drives the fan as a protection diode across. It's all very logical and simple. Um, I Did ponder it.

This circuitry reminds me of the 4060, but I don't think it is related to 4060 because it's got purely binary outputs. Um, but that is more or less it. It's quite nice in a way if you like chemical smells been put into the house. I Was surprised by the on ratio to off ratio I Thought this was just going to go like on for a few seconds and then stay off for an hour or something like that.

But the uh, five minutes on for 15 minutes off is quite a long duration. But having said that, it is one of those super low power uh, solar style. Motors Uh, I could test that Kunda 1.5 volts one moment. Please test complete 25 milliamps so you know it's the battery is going to last a good length of time at that.

So there we have it. Uh, it's unusual because it's got a much bigger head to the wicking section. It's got the section that carries the aroma oil up. It usually is an oil based uh up to this large area and they've just because it's a passive airflow thing, they've just got a very large Wick Um, but there we have it.

The Oust uh, fan assisted battery operated electronic air freshener. Oh, I Should also mention that the date and the circuit board is 2004. So roughly just under 20 years ago at this point in time. So it is an old design I Think it probably hung around for a while and then just disappeared to be replaced by the latest Thad air freshener.

But that's it. The Oust Electronic Air Freshener. Interesting little device well worth taking apart.