How to program a Noma Outdoor Timer model 052-8873-0 49887

Years ago my wife bought these cool Noma outdoor timers with two plugs from Canadian Tire and when she pulled them out recently, they didn't work. They looked like they were programmed correctly but nada, no dice, nothing. Some of the numbers on the back are 052-8873-0 and 49887. If you search the web for this device, you also get nada, nothing, crap. Noma products are some of the most poorly documented devices out there and their web support presence is non-existent. When you type in these numbers all you get are stupid websites that want to charge you $40 US for a PDF download of some photocopied manual that is not even the same model of the thing you're looking for, or websites where helpful but clueless people post answers like "Your NOMA timer does not exist, but here is a website on water heater timers, just do what they say..."

Yes, the web is chocked full of people willing to give you useless information or trying to make a buck off you in order to program the thing you bought years ago but chucked/recycled the instruction sheet for. So, after an evening of pressing buttons, I present to you, the answer to the question of "How the hell do you program this stupid thing?"

There are six main buttons. Minute, Hour, Day, Clock, Prog, On-Off, and some secondary functions like RDM(random) and DST(daylight savings time). There is also an R(reset) and RCL-CD which I think is recall or reset or something.

To set the clock, hold the Clock button and keep it held down while you manipulate the Minute, Hour, Day(pay attention to the am/pm). When you let go of Clock, it should save the time settings.

When you press "Prog", notice the small "1" on the left for program 1. Each numbered program (there are 20) has an "On" and an "Off" setting and text is shown on the left to display what mode you are in("On" appears first). "On" is what time you want the thing to come on, "Off" is when it will shut off.

Repeatedly pressing Prog skips to program 1 "On" then Program 1 "Off", then program 2 "On", program 2 "Off" etc.. If you want every day of the week, press the Day button several times until all the days of the week are displayed (it will flash by with variants and you stop onb the one you want, mon to fri, Mon, Wed, Fri, etc..).

To set the "On" time for Program 1 , press the Hour and Minute to the desired time. To set the Off time, press Prog once (notice the off text on the left) and press Hour and Minute to the desired shut off times. To get out of Prog mode, press Clock once.

The key to making the device work, and the one point of confusion for me was the On-Off button. It cycles through four modes: On, Off, Auto On, Auto Off and they must be set in a particular way. If it is currently 5pm when you are programming and you are expecting an On time of 6pm and an Off time of 11pm, press On-Off until it says "AUTO Off". This means that it is 5 pm, you want the device to be off, but come on automatically at 6pm and off at 11pm. Setting On-Off to "On" or "Off" just overrides the programming and makes the device look like it is not working. If it was 7pm I guess you'd leave it at "Auto On" and the programmed off time for program 1 would kick in and shut if off.

The RND (random) is if you want to randomize the times you selected by adding a tiny offset so it does not start at 6pm exactly but perhaps 6:13 or something like that. I haven't been able to experiment with this fully but it appears to work along those lines. To use this hold down the Hour button (the one that says RND over it) for five seconds until you see the RND text appear on the right.

DST (Daylight Savings Time) works the same way. Press the Clock button (that says DST under it) and the clock will jump ahead an hour(hold it for five seconds).

And there it is.. no thanks to Noma.. I was about ready to go to Canadian Tire and bust open the box and take a picture with my phone

Stupid Noma.....