Origa.me

My Binary Clock is finally finished having chased out the last of the show-stopping bugs last night. It now shows the correct time and looks very cool.

The ultimate in "Geek Chic" - a binary clock I made myself!

The original circuit was inspired by one published by Hans Summers. I decided not to use the mains frequency as a time base as the only transformer I have is a DC one and I also had thoughts of keeping my hands untied as far as power sources go in the future. There is a crystal time base modification shown on Hans' site but I opted instead to use one published elsewhere by Peter H. Wendt for his Nixie clock - can't remember why I chose this now but it all works fine which is the important bit.

As this was my first refresher in electronics in over a decade, I decided to do it the old-school way with ICs. The resulting circuit is larger and less flexible than if I had used a Micro-controller but it's what I know so was a good exercise.

Update: If you've got Flash installed and happened to notice the fancy 'working' animated binary clock image at the top of the page - we have James Kessler to thank for very kindly creating it and allowing me to post it on my blog. It's a very accurate rendition of the actual clock - more so perhaps because it doesn't suffer from the time drift which mine seems to. Thanks James - good job!

Gallery images

Front of LED and button boards Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 783	Reverse of LED board Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 689	Front of controller and timer boards Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 821
Reverse of controller and timer boards Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 657	Assembled boards ready to be inserted into case Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 682	Assembled internal view Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 649
Reverse of case Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 582	The finished article (2:13:27 pm in case you were wondering!) Date: 04/21/1999 Views: 628