1hz clock

I'd rather not... I'd also like it to be standalone, powered off a 9V battery perhaps?

I am thinking about making a no-microcontroller clock/timer/stopwatch (74 series ICs only + passive components, preferably). To make it as simple as possible I want to have a 1Hz clock as the basis for the system. Any ideas on how to get an accurate 1Hz clock?

I designed one of these about 30 years ago to drive an old 'International' (now IBM) schoolhouse/railroad clock. It's still in use in the next room. All of the documentation is in disk, on state of the art 8" double-sided double-density floppy disks. I suppose I could go down to the garage and dig out my S-100 computer and hope the mice haven't torn the wires out of it or eaten the boot disk. I'll look around and see if I can find any printed documentation. As I recall there was a crystal oscillator that used a 'color-burst' crystal (this was before the days of 32 KHz watch crystals) and a chain of 7490's (it was also before the days of inexpensive cmos).

Don

The logical and high-tech solution would be to simply use an RTC which has a precision 1Hz output!

That was my thought as well. You would have to program it to start the oscillator and enable the 1Hz output - not a big deal.

Don

The logical and high-tech solution would be to simply use an RTC which has a precision 1Hz output! Or, you could use a receiver for the time signal radio service wherever you are on the planet. Is there some reason you don't even reveal which continent you are on?

  1. I was thinking of an RTC, but that would be sort of cheating and an oxymoron. (and expensive) (A very precise clock to drive a homemade not-so-precise clock?)

  2. US of A. I don't want the radio. I think I have decided on a crystal.

How about this, though?:

Send the 32.768kHz to a 12 bit counter, now we have 32,768/2^12 = 8. Then get a decade counter, and tie 'Q7 to reset. Then, when counter reaches 8th output, it "overflows." Would this give me a fairly precise 1Hz clock?

If you have a 12 bit counter, why not go all the way to 15?

Line frequency is not that accurate - I have Bose CD clock radio that is always gaining time because it runs from line frequency. Great sound, always fast.

Whenever I put a multimeter frequency counter on the mains here, it has always come back fast, you can see it doing a slow drift between 60Hz up to about 62.5 if I recall.

KE7GKP:

Line frequency is not that accurate

For the purposes of long-term time accuracy, power mains frequency is just as accurate as the NITS Atomic Clock. Because all the utility companies maintain the grid frequency against WWV.

Yeah that 'NITS' atomic clock isn't all it's hyped up to be :wink:

To satisfy my curiosity (which you're obviously under no obligation to do...), can you point to something that documents this? Oh wait, here it is: Utility frequency - Wikipedia

If you have a 12 bit counter, why not go all the way to 15?
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/scls704a/scls704a.pdf

Digikey (where I'm buying from) only sells minimum 880. How about a cheaper 14-bit unit with a toggle (2-bit) connected to the output? 2^14*2 = 32.768kHz.

tastewar:
Yeah that 'NITS' atomic clock isn't all it's hyped up to be :wink:

The Knights of NI have a Time Service?

What is the average hz of an unladen swallow's wingbeat? :grin:

But eight dual flip flops would be 16 flip flops total... 2^16 = 65536. I'm looking for 2^15. If I use seven dual flip flops, what should I use to take the frequency from 2hz to 1hz?

Doh! :stuck_out_tongue:

I just hit my self in the head b/c I realized I am being WAY to harsh on myself. I'll just use a 65.536kHz crystal and use a dual 8-bit (16 bits total) binary counter to bring it down to 1 hz.

Thanks for all the help!

OK. So I found the 74HC590. This is an 8-bit counter, right? So if I daisy-chain 2 of these, I should get the 65.536kHz crystal down to 1Hz?

an ATtiny and an external 8 or 16 Mhz crystal could do it (Set it up to pulse every second)

I am going to end this topic and start a new, more specific one. Thanks for all the help!

Yes,
Feed 64 KHz into CCLK, RCO from stage 1 into stage 2, RCO Pulse from will yield a low going pulse 1/64K wide 1x a second.

See figure 3 for suggestion on getting 64KHz source. Other ways also possible, this seems pretty straight forward.
http://www.z80.info/uexosc.htm

seems pretty straight forward.

Not as easy as I would have hoped, but I guess it will be fine. For the first link, they don't specify where the output is...any ideas?

Also, is there a way I can get 50% duty cycle?

Enable the outputs, and use the MSB, which will change hi/lo/hi/lo every 1/2 second.

right...

how exactly do I setup the crystal though?

I want to connect the 65.536kHz crystal to the clock of a binary counter. no microcontrollers involved.
Thanks!

Reply #24 has circuits to make the 64K oscillator that will drive the clock line.