Collaborate Disseminate
Bats use echolocation to see objects in front of them. They emit an ultrasonic pulse around 20 kHz (and up to 100 kHz) and then sense the pulses as they reflect off an object and back to the bat. It’s the same type of mechanism used by ultrasonic proximity sensors …read more
[Paul] likes a precise oscillator. His recent video shows a crystal oscillator with a “watch crystal” and a CMOS counter, the CD4060. Using such a circuit can produce very stable frequencies and since the 32.768 kHz crystal is a power of 2, you get nice divisions out of the counter.
We’ve seen the same trick done with decade counters (like the 4518B) to divide by 10 instead of powers of two to make frequency standards. A 1 MHz crystal can easily generate 100 kHz, 10 kHz, etc.
[Paul] mentions the clock is a Schmitt trigger input (he said output, but …read more
Continue reading A Crystal Oscillator For A Stable Bench Reference
The Hackaday Prize is all about Building Hope. We want to see hardware creators change the world with microcontrollers and breadboards. That’s a noble goal, but it also doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. That’s exactly what [Yann] is doing with a pile of surplus Soviet components, a bunch of bodge wire, and exactly zero transistors. He’s building a hexadecimal display module using only relays and diodes. It’s absurd, but still very very cool.
The inspiration for this build comes from homebrew computing. With this, there’s a recurring problem of displaying the status of a bus. Sure, a bank of …read more