A PTC fuse / resistor should do the trick.
Still at a loss here, how would a resettable fuse help me in this situation?
Also, I've been searching and searching but not having much luck finding examples of circuits to help me in my tinkering. I've been successful at making an adjustable interval timer and used the knowledge I gained from that kit to successfully make a one shot pulse that happens almost as soon as power is applied.
Yay, that is step one.
Still searching for a way (and this all needs to be when power is applied since I can't hang around 24 hours a day to push a button)
A way to have a delay before a second pulse is triggered. I'm thinking this needs to be some circuit with perhaps two 555 chips (I have like 4 or 5 of these things around)(I also have a couple 14 stage ripple counters, a dual D type flip flop, a mc14093bcp though I don't know what use that will be for this, and a LM324N though I couldn't even manage to download the data sheet for that.)
I've found some reference about using one 555 timer to trigger another but it talks about AC coupling and I don't really understand what that means and looking it up on google didn't really help me much (sorry, I do have a headach at the moment so it is making me a bit impatient with searches that return oodles of completely non related matches.) Could some one give an explanation about how this AC coupling is done to make one 555 able to trigger a second one?
Finally, I've picked up an assortment of DPDT relays. I'm wondering how best to wire them up to achieve the polarity swap first pulse positive from the initial one shot and second pulse negative from the delayed one shot.
I had figured this part would be easy after I had managed to wire up a switch for triggering the actuator but I guess that is just because I managed to find the right switch for the job- It happened to be a momentary center off DPDT switch so it was pretty easy to wire so pushing the switch one way would actuate up and pushing the switch the other would actuate down.
Any tips here would help me loads.
Thanks, now I think the headach is gonna put me to bed.