Packaged Metronome (step pacer) OR can this be blamed on "This is Spinal Tap" ?

 I tried using the solderless breadboard concept along with an old portable radio cabinet to quickly put the metronome together into a usable form:

packaged metronome

It works fairly well, I wanted a 20k ohm pot for the range between roughly 40 to 50 beats per minute but didn't have any.  I did have some 10k ohm pots with detents which I had bought for another idea.
They have 11 detents (I couldn't find any with 10) and all I could think of was:

goes to 11

although I guess you'd really need 12 detents to go from 0 to 11 so it doesn't really apply.  In any case the pots weren't all that linear so I went with 10 position switches and 9 resistors for that project instead so I had the detent pots available.  Weirdly the rotary switches do have 12 positions so 0 to 11 is doable :)

I didn't plan ahead so I had to cut two holes in the battery tray on the back of the radio cabinet to allow the pots to fit.  So that prevented a rapid prototype.

holes cut in battery tray for 2 pots to fit

Here the insides can be seen, the small solderless breadboard with the self-stick foam was taped to the back of the dial window.

inside of metronome

  Almost all of the connections are by pin socket or on the solderless breadboard so it's easy to change stuff.  I also made a 9V connector using an old connector from a battery along with some heat shrink tubing, works fine.  I dislike the soft back 9V connectors, the hard backed ones like from a battery are better.

I did try it out and it worked fairly well during exercise.  The click is loud enough to hear over the clatter of the Nordic Track and the radio.  But I found myself getting out of step as my mind wandered.  I'd match my left or right leg with the click and then step with the other leg on the downbeat.  

Maybe a double rate of clicking would be better ?  I was counting steps as being left to left but thinking about it, the steps are actually left to right, right ?  

With a PIC it would be fairly easy to have a 1 to 199 beat per minute click - I'll have to think about it.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm