My ongoing clock project has an interesting problem that called for an interesting solution. Enjoy!
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Hello, did you succeed?, btw i am in a simillar problem, i have an old general electric radio alarm clock from canada, but i live in europe(50hz), so time slows down, is there perhaps any solution for me? Thanks in advanced
What would you do if it was the other way around (running a 60 Hz clock in Europe)?
Build a crystal oscillator and devide the frequency down to 60?
Build a PLL circuit?
Use the 50 Hz to make a resonant circuit oscillate at 300 and devide that frequency by 5?
All of that sounds more complex/difficult.
That's a nice classic way to do.
I want a year down and tutorial of your storage scope ๐
Good idea how to use 50Hz clock on 60Hz mains.
I have opposite problem.
How to use 60Hz clock from USA on 50Hz. Voltage isnt problem to me. Step dovn transformer is solution but, cannot solve frequency.
I though of a cycle swallow, or maybe faking it with a crystal oscillator and divider – but on the other hand, the mains frequency is actually specified to be long term accurate โฆ. The main problem with mains driven digital clocks as opposed to synchronous motor clocks is that interference can add extra clock pulses
Fran, how would a 50Hz vibrator valve (tube) go in being the clock driver for your display?
I have no idea whether a vibrator is even appropriate in this case, but as a Just-For-Fun project it may be an idea for a future vid.
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We used to have a synchronous electric clock. I really liked it. It seemed to keep near perfect time from the 60Hz AC line frequency. Now everyone seems to use quartz for some reason.
Haha love that expression I use it a lot! When you get layers of stuff it stops becoming household cleaning and starts becoming archeology!
Don't laugh, my bench is worse… I'm rolling my desk chair over electronic parts that discovered gravity. It also doesent help having a cat that likes to dig around.
I didnt get how the 60hz pulse converts to 50Hz.."Counter counts 1 less?" Cant get my head around it….
Hi Fran,
Hope you are still reading comments from this somewhat old video… Fran, I need your help. Being that I live in South America (Chile) where the AC mains standard is 220V @ 50Hz, I need a circuit the opposite of yours, with an output of 110V with a AC frequency of 60 cycles.
Before I continue on this endeavor, your opinion on how to proceed would be very helpful.
A) Is it possible to use your schematic as a road map for modifications?
B) Bite the bullet and just purchase some commercial converter device?
C) An Arduino (MCU) programming solution? (yuck)
Regarding your comment about using a micro controller solution (I agree with you, it's like cheating) versus an old school component solution… your singing to the choir. I much prefer the latter.
Thanks again,
Ken
My alarm clock still is one that I built using a kit around 1980. Because its case is badly twisted plastic, held together with Scotch tape, I am reluctant to open it for checking the chip. but I think it was a Mostek. Unlike yours, it runs on a crystal โ I remember I could tweak the frequency. And it is in 24 hour format. I made two modifications to the kit, I did not like the 35 V supply that I felt was scary. I reduced it to something between 20 and 25 V. On the other hand, I considered its bulk capacitor inadequate, so I added a bigger one, just hanging there behind the PCB. With that, my alarm clock survives nearly 10 second long power outages without losing its count.
I was puzzled by the high operating voltage, but believe now that it was due to the chip being built on P-channel FETs. Iโll check it, if the clock ever fails so that can justify opening the warped case.
Great solution, I think they call that a 'swallow counter' since it swallows a pulse every so often. Note that the 4000 series chips like your 4017 have a maximum supply voltage rating of 15v but 16 probably won't kill it!
Do it YOUR WAY. Go girl ! Back in the late 80's, pay TV came out, and so all engineers and technicians of course wanted to build their own Pay TV decoders. Everyone I knew used a phase lock loop method to lock onto the still active horizontal sync pulses that were embedded within the vertical sync pulse, and thus now you could be in sync for the rest of the frame and insert new horizontal sync pulses where the horizontal sync pulses had been removed by the pay TV encoder. So this becomes a frame by frame decoder. It requires lots of components, and also requires a power supply.
But I stuck to the " Do it YOUR WAY. " approach. Instead, I designed a line by line decoder. It required one MC14538B, one MC14066B, one LM393, 3 transistors, and some passive components. The total power consumption was 10ma. So you would just stick my tiny circuit board into your typical TV converter, tap into it's +12VDC supply, and connect my boards video input to the TV converters demodulated baseband video output, and connect my boards video output to the output modulators baseband video input. Job done. Total cost of parts, about $6. It was lots of fun.
No fun just throwing a cut and paste microcontroller. Awesome vintage projects Fran. Your channel is my favorite. I love learning about the vintage stuff itโs more of an art form designing a logic circuit versus slapping an Arduino in their. Keep it up!!!! ๐๐๐๐
Great solution !