[time-nuts] 5370B stop trigger not working
Hi all, My stop trigger has stopped working on my 5370B (a while back - just getting around to fixing it). I have gone through the troubleshooting process from the manual and it seems to point to A4U2 (Schmidt trigger) being faulty. Fixing this looks like a decent job of: sourcing a part, removing the front panel, removing board A4, desoldering, and reassembling. Before I dive into this, does anyone have any advice? Most important being the Schmidt trigger - where do I get one? Regards, Jim Palfreyman ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FE 405/5680/5650 caution !!!!
Bert, please remember that I am interested in the board to steer the FE 5680 Rb; I will surely want several of those. I just received a Keysight 53230A counter/timer, the current recommended replacement for the HP 5370B. The 53230A is nominally 12 digit but will display up to 15 digits and has 20 ps time resolution. In my case, it is desirable because it is a lot smaller than the 5370B and it has USB, GPIB and (best for me) Ethernet connectivity. The TimeLab software has drivers built in for the 53230A. Larry McDavid On 12/12/2015 10:43 AM, Bert Kehren via time-nuts wrote: ... After many iterations we now have a Universal GPSDO based on which PIC we insert. Works on the FE405, Skip's 5650 and the 5680 that every body bought out of China... ... -- Best wishes, Larry McDavid W6FUB Anaheim, California (SE of Los Angeles, near Disneyland) ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Once upon the time there was a "Vibrograph", see nice pictures here: https://www.google.com/search?q=vibrograph&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigtcmSn9fJAhUW8GMKHVNyAMcQsAQIHA&biw=1760&bih=888 ,which picked up the sound of watches, clocks, and the watch maker was able to set the watch very accurately, these machines did not used any fancy DSP despite that they worked very well, I myself used one some 55 years ego in Switzerland,. to get a reliable digital signal from a noisy analog signal is the most reliable way to use an analog PLL with a linear multiplier type phase detector [ at least one input of the phase detector must be linear e.g. a transitional gate [cd4016 and it's derivatives ], the noise could be filtered out with a low pass filter or integrator, the price of the method is that it also eliminates the phase-noise of the the input signal, . That was the method which was used by the Vibrograph. 73 LJ6UHN Alex On 12/12/2015 7:15 AM, Dave Martindale wrote: Someone is in the process of writing open-source watch timing software. You may want to look into it. It was announced here: http://forums.watchuseek.com/f6/open-source-timing-software-2542874-post21977314.html#poststop It contains these links: First the goodies. Here are Windows binaries http://ciovil.li/tg.zip and here is the full source code https://github.com/vacaboja/tg Apparently this software is better at dealing with noisy signals from microphones than Biburo. Since it's open source, you can see what it's doing internally. It expects an analog input, and does its own filtering to find the interesting edges within the sound of each tick. The precision with which you can time events is likely to be limited by the frequency response of your sensor and the amplifier. If that's limited to 20 kHz, a standard PC sound card is adequate. For up to 80 kHz or so, you can buy a relatively inexpensive USB "audio interface" that digitizes at 192 kHz (typically 24 bit resolution). At somewhat higher cost, you can get professional audio interfaces that accept an external clock source. - Dave On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Andrea Baldoni wrote: Hello! I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital pulse, but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow high resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will be very hard. In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp you can regulate your wrist watch. Best regards, Andrea Baldoni ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2016.0.7294 / Virus Database: 4483/11164 - Release Date: 12/12/15 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
And check out Bryan Mumford's stuff at bmumford.com ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FE 405/5680/5650 caution !!!!
Shortly after joining time-nuts on Corby's recommendation I announced that I wanted to build a complete Dual Mixer for less than $ 200. Richard McCorkle offered to help me with the code for the counters. After completion we started talking about GPSDO's which I had previously worked with Brooks Shera on. We did an extensive methodical review of the system and discovered serious problems with the the AD1861 when used in a filter application. We tested many D/As and switched to the LTC1655. Explored dithering. During that work a German friend that I work with on a different subject made me aware of the FE5680. At the price I bought a couple and was surprised at its performance. Though they had been in Europe for a couple of years I had not seen any thing on time-nuts. I published my observations. At the same time we started work on a digital controller Richard the code and the rest of us testing and analysis. A year in to the program I discovered the FE 405 on ebay and bought 4 for the team. Early on I noticed outstanding performance that was later confirmed by Tom. Focus was shifted to the 405. After many iterations we now have a Universal GPSDO based on which PIC we insert. Works on the FE405, Skip's 5650 and the 5680 that every body bought out of China. Some time nuts have run units for over a year and I feel comfortable to have Cash build, test and sell the units soon. Units he build are presently being tested. We are also assembling a documentation package that will be on his web site. Depending what the interest is there also will be an auxiliary board for the 405 with a divider and output filter for 5 MHz, DC/DC converter, regulators and a PIC for display purposes. This board will not be assembled but comes with two MC output transformers since small purchase will not be economical. All other parts will be readily available. An analog temperature control board, board only will also be available. All boards a 5 X 5 cm and stack able. There was talk about a digital fan control hope some one will step up to the plate. Hope this answers your question. Bert Kehren In a message dated 12/12/2015 11:00:46 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jsrobb...@earthlink.net writes: Bert, For those of us who are not familiar with your work, but who have purchased one of Skip's FE 405s, could you summarize what work you and your group have done on the "FE 405/5680/5650"? You say "Cash Olsen will be responsible for the sale of assembled and tested units." What assembled and tested units are you referring to? Many thanks. Jim Robbins N1JR Can be directly emailed at call @arrl.net ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Someone is in the process of writing open-source watch timing software. You may want to look into it. It was announced here: http://forums.watchuseek.com/f6/open-source-timing-software-2542874-post21977314.html#poststop It contains these links: First the goodies. Here are Windows binaries http://ciovil.li/tg.zip and here is the full source code https://github.com/vacaboja/tg Apparently this software is better at dealing with noisy signals from microphones than Biburo. Since it's open source, you can see what it's doing internally. It expects an analog input, and does its own filtering to find the interesting edges within the sound of each tick. The precision with which you can time events is likely to be limited by the frequency response of your sensor and the amplifier. If that's limited to 20 kHz, a standard PC sound card is adequate. For up to 80 kHz or so, you can buy a relatively inexpensive USB "audio interface" that digitizes at 192 kHz (typically 24 bit resolution). At somewhat higher cost, you can get professional audio interfaces that accept an external clock source. - Dave On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Andrea Baldoni wrote: > Hello! > > I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a > little > on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and > obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. > > So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital > pulse, > but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that > I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. > > The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of > measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow > high > resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the > future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will > be > very hard. > > In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here > > http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp > > you can regulate your wrist watch. > > Best regards, > Andrea Baldoni > > ___ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FE 405/5680/5650 caution !!!!
Bert, For those of us who are not familiar with your work, but who have purchased one of Skip's FE 405s, could you summarize what work you and your group have done on the "FE 405/5680/5650"? You say "Cash Olsen will be responsible for the sale of assembled and tested units."What assembled and tested units are you referring to? Many thanks. Jim Robbins N1JR Can be directly emailed at call @arrl.net ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Have a look at this page: http://www.steminc.com/ I have used a number of such products for an entomology study. Picking up the vibration from a hard wood plant of borers eating the wood. Raj At 12/12/2015, you wrote: >Hello! > >I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little >on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and >obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
HI You *may* find that moving the passband of the mic up above 4 KHz helps things a bit. An analog high pass filter that rejects normal speech and low frequency rumble ahead of the detection process wold be the old school way to do it. The degree to which that helps depends a bit on the tick that your escarpment makes. There is no real guarantee that it’s got energy up above 4 KHz. They often do, but that’s not a guarantee. Bob > On Dec 11, 2015, at 1:44 PM, Andrea Baldoni wrote: > > Hello! > > I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little > on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and > obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. > > So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital > pulse, > but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that > I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. > > The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of > measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow high > resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the > future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will be > very hard. > > In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here > > http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp > > you can regulate your wrist watch. > > Best regards, > Andrea Baldoni > ___ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Back in the day, companies, like Vibrograf, Greiner, Elna, L&R, all made timing machines that were based on the same principles. The machines used a crystal, or tuning fork frequency reference, and divided it down for the various standard (and not so standard) watch beat rates. The divided reference signal was used to turn a synchronous motor, which rotated a drum which had a single turn loop of wire wound around it, in the fashion of a "one turn per drum width" screw thread. The watch's movement was clamped into a mount that had a piezoelectric element, usually a rochelle salt crystal, that turned the small vibrations into an electric representation that was fed to a chain of amplifiers, filtered to amplify only the audible component until it was large enough to trigger a tiny little thyratron tube. The thyratron tube was set so that when the impulse exceeded a variable threshold, it would fire, and would discharge a capacitor into a solenoid for an instant, and pull in the armature that caused a metal "bale", that was as wide as the drum, to strike the wire that is wrapped around the rotating drum. Because this wire essentially proceeded along the drum as it rotated, the intersection of the wire, and the bale formed a scanning element, not unlike the beam on a CRT oscilloscope. To record the impulse, a paper tape was fed between the rotating drum, a typewriter ribbon, and the metal bale. When the metal bale "ticked", it pushed the ribbon against the paper, and the travel was stopped by the rotating wire wrapped on the drum, and an ink mark was made. Ok, why all this complexity? The idea was to, tick-by-tick, record the difference between the watch movement's escapement's noise and the smooth flow of time embodied by the crystal/tuning fork/dividers, etc.. By adjusting the gain of the microphone's amplifier stage, and as a result, the threshold of the printer, the watchmaker could observe quiet repeating noises all the way down to the pretty noisy tick of the watch. When you look at these actual traces, your squishy ware's DSP can easily see the slope of the group of traces, which is the rate of the watch, and any rhythmic variations of the individual "ticks" recorded on the paper. You can see things like irregular spacing of the teeth on the escapement wheel, and irregular spacing of many of the later wheels and pinions. By adjusting the gain of the amplifier stages, and the resulting shift in threshold, you can select out noises of different loudnesses. And the speed of the thyratron, and charged capacitor allowed multiple strikes of the bale during each tick. You can see the noise made by the impulse jewel touching the tuning fork, and the noise made by the pallet jewels touching the escapement wheel... Lots of very interesting things that indicate the quality of the movement, and the state of its lubrication... as well as a nearly instantaneous indication of the rate of the watch, as it sits in the various "positions" (dial up, dial down, pendant up, down, right left...) All of this from the feverish minds of horologists back at the dawn of the vacuum tube. I would suggest that any programming you use for your tools do similar things. -Chuck Harris Andrea Baldoni wrote: Hello! I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital pulse, but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow high resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will be very hard. In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp you can regulate your wrist watch. Best regards, Andrea Baldoni ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Andrea, The watch or clock produces many sounds during its operation and the issue is selecting the required one. As you wish to investigate the timing function may I suggest that you incorporate some form of level control to eliminate minor signals and allow only the strong sounds from the escapement. You will find that even these will vary dependant upon the amount of drop each pallet has and if it is in beat. It may be interesting for you to have a look at the various watch timing machines that are available and see if any ideas spring to mind. I use a home-made system but various software and hardware solutions exist such as http://home.teleport.com/~gregsa/clocks/wtm/index.htm and http://www.delphelectronics.co.uk/products.html Good luck with your experiments. Peter On 11/12/2015 18:44, Andrea Baldoni wrote: Hello! I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital pulse, but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow high resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will be very hard. In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp you can regulate your wrist watch. Best regards, Andrea Baldoni ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit
Hello! I decided to do some experiments with mechanical clocks, so I worked a little on picking up escapement ticking sound, with the idea of processing it and obtaining a "clean" digital pulse to feed a counter. So far, I have not yet been able to find the best way to obtain a digital pulse, but I have already built the preamp for the piezoelectrick pickup, that I used to feed the mic input of a PC sound card for spectrum analysis. The timing could eventually be done in software because the whole idea of measuring watches by picking up their noise almost surely doesn't allow high resolution anyway, but I will plan to try hardware solutions as well in the future. I hope to be able to measure the jitter of the clock, but it will be very hard. In the meantime, with the free software Biburo you can download here http://tokeiyade.michikusa.jp you can regulate your wrist watch. Best regards, Andrea Baldoni ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] One more info on FE 405
The date coming with the units was plotted at 5 MHz using DD FF and EX OR divide by 3 with symmetrical output Bert Kehren ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.