radioshack is gone . the only idea I had for a programmable device was the raspberry pi . I should get the 555 timer you recommend . I could probably get it before the raspberry pi expansion board . I could just stand there with a watch and click the switch myself . Back to the governor throttle body woodward is a local company I tried to get replacement from them , they had one but it had a different activator so I would need to reprogram to use it , so I guess I would have to lease their software and hire one of hire one of their software engineers . I just needed to replace roller bearings I got the parts from Granger .
About drive on wood I was looking at a vehicle to grid charger for Nissan Leaf . The part was used in military contract .
I asked them if a Nissan Leaf was included in the price for that charger . Last I heard from them .
I would like to build a megawatt size wood gas generator to level 3 charge electric vehicles and send power to electrical grid .
If you miss radio shack check out allied electronics.
http://www.alliedelec.com/industrial-automation/
They have all the electronics you could ever want for general projects. They where my first choice for this type of stuff in industry. I used one of their small plc to run the heating system in my old house. That had an oil boiler tarm wood boiler two zones in the house and a storage tank that acted as the last zone to heat and the first heat source when it was up to temp. Using one of their low end plc I was able to write all the code I needed including a couple of analog temperature sensors. That approach will give you a much more dependable solution then the pi will. Anything running on top of a linux or pc operating system will have performance issues at process control speeds.
If you are looking at a simple timer control, get one of these. This is what we use I have used these for a few years now and they work quite well.
I also have a timer code for Arduino, if you want something more integrated into a control panel. The code works off an input from pot you can wire remotely.
int pot_value = analogRead(A0); // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1); //input the off time pot is set too
int ledPin = 13; // select the pin for the LED
int sensorValue=0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
const int sensorMin = 0; // sensor minimum, discovered through experiment
const int sensorMax = 1023; // sensor maximum, discovered through experiment
void setup()
{
// declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT:
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void timer1(){
int pot_value = analogRead(A0); //read potentiometer value
//isn't greater than the 60th part of 1023
int timer1_value = map(pot_value, 0, 1023, 0, 60); //Mapping pot values to timer
for (int i = timer1_value; i >= 0; i--){ //Begin the loop
Serial.println(i);
delay(100);
}
}
void timer2(){
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1); //read potentiometer value
//isn't greater than the 60th part of 1023
int timer2_value = map(pot_value1, 0, 1023, 0, 60); //Mapping pot values to timer
for (int i = timer2_value; i >= 0; i--){ //Begin the loop
Serial.println(i);
delay(3000);
}
}
void loop() {
// read the value from the sensor:
int pot_value = analogRead(A0);
// turn the ledPin on
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
timer1();
// turn the ledPin off:
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1);
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
timer2();
}
Keep in mind both the Raspberry and Arduino both do one thing at time. So we use multiple Arduinos as slaves to the Raspberry that need timers.
Exciting news!
I spent some time repairing any air leak I could find. There were a few pretty good sized ones.
Gave it another test run. 20 minutes into operation, I got a sustained flare! 
After putting in quite a lot of work, it feels great to have seen this successfully operate.
Thank you everyone here for helping me get to this point!
Cool that you got it working!!!
Glad to hear it …
I was trying
to turn wood boiler into gasifier to run generator . I had fire , tossed in fir boards . got a big roaring gas flare . Could not start engine . switched back to flare and just had smoke . This might be something that can’t be done . That was the best it did . Get flare gas pull on it get smoke . Did best to totally seal boiler .