Fresh off the press – some photos of the Oscilloblock – Summer Dusk edition in its new home! The owner is clearly a huge Nixie tube and neon aficionado, but this is his very first CRT clock. What a fitting environment!
Tag Archives: Scope Clock
Presenting the Oscilloblock!
Ahh, summer – it’s well and truly over. But one person in the world is able to enjoy the warm, cheery feeling of summer every single day: the proud new owner of this beautiful Oscilloblock – Summer Dusk edition!
Truly the best thing to come out of the lab this summer – the Oscilloblock!
The Exterior
This playful timepiece features a Lego art case, painstakingly designed and constructed by Oscilloclock lab’s junior technician from a whopping 548 brand-new Lego parts sourced from around the globe. No expenses spared! Even the control knob is actually a Lego Technics gear. And just in case the owner wanted to take it apart and build it all over again, we included a 140-step Lego building guide in the package. Good luck!
The Oscilloblock features a good-looking 1970’s 3-inch (75mm) flat-faced CRT from Toshiba, with the iconic scripted logo in great condition on the base. At the rear is a scarce brown bakelite CRT socket, which are very hard to find complete with the rear insulating cap! The harness consists of tough 3kV tolerant silicone-sheathed cabling, shielded over most of its length to reduce electromagnetic interference.
Wow, these vintage bakelite CRT sockets are hard to find!
No doubts about authenticity!
One design goal was to have more than 90% of the CRT’s surface area completely exposed for viewing and touching, as opposed to encasing it in acrylic. Borne from this was a tremendous achievement for 2015: a new CRT ring support structure!
Acrylic rings with super-tiny pocket holes… cast and machined in Japan!
Internals
The internals of the clock are equally exquisite. A set of latest-revision Oscilloclock control, deflection and power boards drive the CRT at 2.1kV, providing a crystal-clear, ultra-bright trace. And of couse, every figure and character is generated using silky-smooth Circle Graphics.
The CRT assembly simply lifts away for showing off the internals! But DON’T TOUCH…
Latest-revision boards. 250+ components. All hand-mounted!
On-board GPS for accurate timing – anywhere in the world!
Operation
There is only one control. It’s intuitive. It’s fun. It’s simple! Visit my YouTube channel to see various Oscilloclocks in operation.
But not everything is obvious, and Oscilloclocks all ship with an Operation Guide, with content specific to each and every unique unit. Here’s a snippet from the Oscilloblock’s guide:
No Oscilloclock model ships without a decent Operation Guide!
Like what you see?
There’s really no limit to what can be done with a CRT and an idea! It was my son’s idea to use Lego, and he is proud to know there is nothing in the world quite like this Oscilloblock. See the Gallery for other equally unique creations.
Everything begins with an idea…
VectorClock Reloaded!
Aside
Fresh from Oscilloclock Labs – a new VectorClock creation, commissioned for the office of a world-famous film and television director:
Tek 520 VectorClock – S/N 002 (image published with permission of the owner)
This unit is based on an original Tektronix 520 vectorscope, which is the predecessor of the 520A that was used in the first VectorClock, described here. This custom conversion employs several key enhancements, and performance has never been better!
Be sure to check out videos on my YouTube channel.
Tek 520A VectorClock!
Television broadcasting has switched from analog to digital – and if you’ve got a nice HD TV, you’ll be loving it!
But with that transition came the death of an entire breed of equipment – the Vectorscope.
Just to be clear, these are not monitors for playing ancient video games using vector graphics!! No, the Vectorscope is (was) used to give a delightful view of the ‘vectors’ inside an NTSC or PAL video signal, describing the color components of the signal.
If you were lucky enough to be a TV broadcast technician, you’d use your Vectorscope all the time to check your vectors’ amplitudes and phase. You would even give your vectors names like ‘Jack’ and ‘Jill’, and check up on their relationships daily, just as any responsible guardian would!
But above all, you would marvel every single day at the beautiful hardware you were using, and the complex circuitry involved. Take a look at my Tektronix 526 Vectorscope, which has oodles of delicious tubes to heat my shop on a nice winter’s day:
Well, it all went digital and there is no longer any need for analog color signal analysis. But dry your tears… There is something even better:
Announcing the Tek 520A VectorClock
This lovely Oscilloclock reincarnation of a Tektronix 520A, sold at Maker Faire Tokyo 2013, allows its new owner to forever relive the magic of NTSC, PAL and SECAM analog color.
Tektronix 520A VectorClock – brilliant blend of the old and new!
See more related videos on my YouTube channel
The Tektronix 520A has a stunning built-in array of lights for illuminating the CRT graticules. By simply removing the bezel and external graticule, the Tek 520A morphs into a deliciously moody timepiece!
Normally, I shun CRTs with built-in graticules. Their lines detract dreadfully from an Oscilloclock image. But here! The Tek 520A’s internal vectorscope graticule is round! What better way to accentuate a Circle Graphics driven display?
Silky smooth Circle Graphics on steroids!
Under the Cover…
The Tek 520A is solid-state. It can be left on 24 hours a day and not fail for many years. This makes it a perfect match for my Maximum Re-use + Minimum Invasion policy: nearly all existing circuits – HV power supply, deflection amplifiers, blanking – are put to use, with just a few (reversible) tweaks.
The Oscilloclock Power Board is mounted neatly next to its own dedicated low voltage supply. A small relay board can be seen below, for controlling the Tek’s main power unit. All cabling is HV-tolerant and neatly fastened with high-temperature cable ties.
Of the more interesting reversible ‘tweaks’ needed for this retrofit, here we see a delightful little trimpot pretending to be a transistor. Quite an act, I would say!
Like what you see?
If you love big, looming Vectorscopes and need to have one put to good use in your living room, Contact me. And be sure to subscribe from the front page, to track all the other exotic experiments and unique timepieces targeted for 2014!
Credits to [Quinn] in Canada, for providing the initial inspiration for the Tek 520A VectorClock project!
Santa in your Clock!
The world-renowned Santa Claus. How does he get in your house to deliver presents? Does he go down the chimney (if you have one)? Does he shrink and squeeze under your door? Of course not! What silly ideas.
Santa simply converts himself into pure energy and beams in!! I’ve seen this glorious event myself, and now you can too – with the latest Seasonal Treats enhancement from Oscilloclock.com.
Beam me in, Santa!
Not only can you watch Santa on his travels, but you can even control where he drops his presents! Can YOU help him deliver the gifts?
Oscilloclock at Maker Faire Tokyo!
Summer is over! But even as cool weather sets in, the Oscilloclock.com lab is smoking hot, preparing for…
Visit the Oscilloclock.com booth, and check out the luxury 2013 edition Model 1S – to be announced in this blog at end October. One unit will go on sale at the event!
Do chips have bugs?
There are probably many people who think that microcontrollers are bug-free. After all, they are glorified integrated circuits; a hard-wired jumble of infinitesimal transistor logic gates. There should be no unexpected behavior, as long as you operate the device within the rated voltage and temperature parameters….
Wrong!
What we tend to forget from our CPU architecture classes is that a CPU actually has a program inside. Known as microcode, its primary function is to interpret each instruction into the right electrical signals to drive the various parts of the CPU. For example, an addlw 0x7F instruction might involve directing the ALU’s input to the next word in program memory (0x7F), and then telling the ALU to add it to WREG, with output set back in WREG. The microcode for addwf MyVar would be different again; it needs to get a value in RAM, and set the result back there too.
Well, where there is a program, there will definitely be bugs.
My first experience with a microcontroller bug cost me several weekends of frustration, fretting, and frantic but fruitless rework. Here’s how it happened:
Oscilloclock Gone Wild
It was the early days of the Prototype, And things were looking great! My dream was coming to fruition! Except… every once in a while, the clock would go absolutely berserk. Seemingly at random, it would start displaying crazy, meaningless images, and controls would cease to function. Sometimes it would recover; other times, it would exhibit brain death – requiring a hard reset.
April Fool’s? No – it’s a PIC bug!
No amount of testing or experimentation could tell me what the problem was. I rewrote huge blocks of code. I removed massive chunks to simplify the code. I drank more and more coffee. Sleepless nights and grumpy days ensued, wasting my precious youth!
Oscilloclock on Hackaday.com!
Aside
The Model 1 has been given a very nice writeup by the folks at Hackaday.com!
BOO!
Oscilloclock.com proudly presents a new feature – Seasonal Treats !
This month, the ghosts come out of the attic and merge with the electron stream, leaving their telltale prints in the phosphor… but if you get too scared? Just push the button and blow them up!
Model 1 Delivery – Story in Pictures
Gallery
This gallery contains 11 photos.
The excitement! The fervour! We were so giddy we had to take a break in the middle. Continue reading