In order to be able to adjust clocks, it must be possible to use a piezo element mounted to a clock to get an analog signal. As a newbie in electronics I rather like to now how I would be able to transform this signal to a clear block form. By counting clicks from the piezo element over a time interval I will get useful information.
Is the answer to your non-question "probably'?
Must be an old clock.
In this day and age there is no need to adjust clocks anymore.
A laptop/smartphone/etc. all get the local time from the internet.
Leo..
You may need to amplify the signal, then an analog comparator IC (e.g. LM393) will convert it to a suitable digital signal for input to Arduino.
And oscilloscope would be really helpful to see the analog and digital waveforms.
Otherwise it might be helpful if you can record it as audio to better analyze the analog. But you'd need a preamp. A piezo won't work very well in the mic input on a laptop or soundcard because it's impedance is way higher than a regular mic.
One thing in your favor is that you can know the approximate time between clicks so you can set a validation window and interpolate or ignore any missed or false clicks.
The pendulum swings could also be timed.
Hi,
This could be a nice project, many many eons ago, I was at a trade fair, and one of the displays was of a little box that you put your wrist watch into.
When you closed the transparent top, the device listened for the mechanicals and gave a figure representing the consistency of the ticking.
A worn watch or watch in need of cleaning usually gave a bigger value of timing variation than a new or recently worked on time piece.
Not sure how big a clock you would be using it on, but the bigger the more resonances in the piece housing would have to be filtered out.
Tom... 
A Dutch electronics magazine, Elektuur (Elektor), had a project like this in 1990.
pdf-315-42.pdf (2.6 MB)
Leo..
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ThanksTomGeorge,
For 12 years I bought such device in USA. Unfortunately it broke.
I will study your suggestion to see how to detect ticking of clock escapements.
Thanks for answering. But hellas I do not get your point.
Thanks Paul
It is just what I want to measure. But I do miss a suggestion to solve my question.
Thanks DVDdoug for answering.For years I bought a micro device in USA to read clock tickings by means of a piezo. Unfortunately the device broke down. Can you support me with a scheme?
Hello Wawa
you have been one of the few to answer to my question. But unfortunately you didn’t support me with a solution. you may have the opinion that I am busy with useless things but I find clock making very interesting, especially to know how people did it hundreds of years ago.
Thank you jremington
As a mechanical engineer I have little understanding of electronic circuits. Would you please support me with a scheme?
I have looked after pdf-315042.pdf and I found just the input filter I will need. Now I can do further experiments with a microprocessor.
Thanks again.
Henk
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