Light guide clock part 7
Light guide clock part 7, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
God damn it! This is the most frustrating electronic project ever! Nothing is working right. The oscillator is way off, about 10 seconds short every minute. The decade counters are the most touchy bullshit ever. I thought I had the seconds counters working, no. The seconds ‘ones’ is working, and so was the minutes ‘ones’ counter. When I tried to trigger the minutes ‘ones’ counter with the seconds ‘tens’ counter, it just keeps reseting, but it works when triggered by the seconds ‘ones’ counter. I striped everything upstream, and the reseting parts. Now the the minute ‘ones’ counter just doesn’t work. The counters go crazy when you touch the wires. The LEDs have an effect on the circuit. Probably the source of the reset. Something to do with the negative spike though the resistor at pin 15 to ground. WTF! Ok. Peter Wendt sent me an improved oscillator design. I wasn’t going to change the circuit, but sense it’s completely fucked, I’d thought I might as well. The image was also made by Peter, it’s of the modifications needed to make this work for a 12 hour arrangement, which I explained in part 6. After 60 minutes have elapsed, the minutes counter sends a pulse to pin 14, advancing the hours ‘ones’ counter one more hour. Sense the counter starts at 0, an offset is used. Q0 will display 1, Q1 will display 2, etc. The roll over will be in the wrong place, so we use pin 11 into pin 14. Master reset is triggered when the display tries to show 13. Or at least it’s suppose to, if the fucking thing would stop freaking out! I’m starting over with the new oscillator. One interesting development, the LEDs get whiter and brighter when more power is feed into them. This project is all about learning, and I’ve learned I don’t like decade counters. I’m going to look into how Pic processors work. That’s more like programing, not looking forward to that. I am the most stubborn person in the world, so this will get done. No matter how much it hurts.
