The result was the "Meeting-Minder". The Minder operates very simply,

• Turn it on.
• Set the agenda time required (by rotating the big knob) so that the minutes desired reads out in the LCD display.
• Press Start when your ready to go.
• The Green "OK to Talk" light turns on.
• The PIC now counts down the time remaining for the agenda item.
• When 3 minutes remain, the Green light goes off and the Yellow (Warning, time is running out) light goes on.
• When the three minute warning is over the Red light starts flashing for 10 minutes then the Meeting Minder turns off and goes to sleep (every thing goes off here to save the battery).
• At any time the during the time count down period the start button may be pressed to pause the count down, all lights go off and the unit waits until the start button is pressed again, then it continues the count down.
• If the Reset button is pressed, the unit turns off all the lights and waits in the input loop for the next agenda item time to be entered.
• The meeting minder runs for about 8 hours on a single charge and recharges after being plugged into a "wall wart" over night.

The documentation provided here includes:

Schematic in PDF format: Meeting_Minder.pdf

Code in ASCII format: Meeting.c