Tag Archives: オシロクロック

Kikusui Time

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Time – the universal constant. Time passes the same for all peoples; rich or poor, busy or idle, inspired or dispirited. And time has certainly passed for Oscilloclock.com since the 2015 Tokyo Maker Faire – the event that just keeps giving!

At last, we present the final model from that Faire – the Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock!

Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock

See this in HD, and find more exciting videos on my YouTube channel

The Kikusui 537 was hand-picked for conversion by the lab’s youngest technician (9 at the time). He chose it for its small size and portability, but also for its cute colour scheme! A dainty red sweep adjustment knob highlights a bright white and black control panel, with a blue case providing overall contrast and visual soothing.

Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock

The 537 Oscilloclock’s small size makes it the perfect clock for an office desk, bedside table, or mantle. And since this is a ‘maximum re-use’ conversion, the existing circuit is active and all the front panel controls are fully functional. Fiddle with the image’s size and position to your heart’s content! Switch from XY mode to normal sweep mode, to view raw Oscilloclock signals in real time, as the seconds tick by!

History

The 537 was manufactured by Kikusui Electronics Corp., a major producer of test equipment in Japan since 1951. It was produced in large numbers from 1975 and was extremely popular for its small form factor, solid-state design, 5 MHz bandwidth, and ‘low’ price of 45,000 yen (perhaps USD 1,000 in today’s terms). See the catalogue page (Japanese only) and the operating manual (Japanese and English).

Kikusui Logo

The Kikusui Electronics Corp. logo

Construction highlights

In a previous post, I mentioned there are several general approaches to converting an oscilloscope. Since the Kikusui 537 is fully solid-state (it uses transistors instead of valves/tubes, except for the CRT) and it is only 40 years old, I decided on the maximum re-use, minimal invasion approach. (I really should trademark that term!)

This approach involves tying the Oscilloclock Control Board‘s outputs directly into the existing X and Y amplifier circuits. This was easy to do in the 537!

Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock - inside top

Oscilloclock Control Board mounted in the 537

However, as discussed in the Circle Graphics post, we also need to be able to blank the beam at extremely precise intervals. Sadly, the 537 (like nearly all oscilloscopes of this vintage) does NOT have a convenient DC pulse-tolerant Z-axis input. I therefore installed an Oscilloclock Power Board, partially populated to serve as an isolated blanking amplifier, in series with the grid.

Partially populated Oscilloclock Power Board

Partially populated Oscilloclock Power Board

Finally, an Oscilloclock Supply Board was needed to power the other boards.

An Oscilloclock Supply Board is also nestled in there!

An Oscilloclock Supply Board is also nestled in there!

Mounting the Control

What better place to fit the rotary encoder, than on the beautiful red sweep frequency adjustment knob that my junior technician liked so much! Here’s the general story:

Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock - control (original)

Sweep adjust control in its original state

After removing the potentiometer

After removing the potentiometer

The encoder, after hacking with a hacksaw!

The encoder, after hacking with a hacksaw!

Kikusui 537 Oscilloclock - control mounted

Voila – sweep knob now drives the rotary encoder!

Like what you see?

One of the two Kikusui 537 Oscilloclocks crafted for the Maker Faire is still available for the special person with a soft spot for a krazy kikusui klock. Visit the Availability page for more information, and of course see the Gallery for other unique creations!

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)

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!

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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.

Tektronix 1420 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:

Tektronix 526 Vectorscope

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!

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!

Tek 520A VectorClock - Glorious Glow

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!

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.

Tek 520A VectorClock - Maximum re-use, Minimum invasion

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.

Tek 520A VectorClock - Control Board mount and cabling

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!

Tek 520A VectorClock - an unorthodox transistor replacement

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!

Oscilloclock at Maker Faire Tokyo!

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Summer is over! But even as cool weather sets in, the Oscilloclock.com lab is smoking hot, preparing for…

Maker Faire Tokyo 2013

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!

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Font & Figure Creator!

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Those of you who own, or are building, an Oscilloclock may have realized how tedious it is to create a new character or drawing. My little Casper (October, Seasonal Treats post) required a grueling 5 hours to get him looking good!

Casper - as drawn by my son (L) and then the Oscilloclock (R)

Casper – as drawn by my son (L) and then the Oscilloclock (R)

The current method – Painful

I have another blog post series in progress describing the theory behind Circle Graphics figure display, so I won’t elaborate on details, but the current process of getting a figure from paper to screen is very much manual:

  1. Roughly sketch out your figure on graph paper.
  2. Split out your lines and curves into blanked circle and line segments.
  3. For each segment, roughly ascertain the circle’s radius (width and height) and centre coordinates.
  4. Type the numbers into the code file, in PIC assembly language syntax.
  5. Build the code and Program the PIC.
Easy?

NO.The figure looks NOTHING like you expect. The size is wrong. The edges don’t meet up. The curvature is out. The thing is upside down. All of the above!

  • Repeat steps 3, 4, 5 for several hours. Drink coffee. Redraw and repeat for yet another few hours.
    …
    …
  • Finally – Celebrate the birth of a new figure!

The Easier Way

The new Oscilloclock Figure Creator utility allows you to easily create and modify font characters, graphic images, and sprites – interactively.

Continue reading →

Circle Graphics – Lissajous figures

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By the time you read this post, you must have seen the term “Circle Graphics” in a thousand places across the site.

In fact, “Circle Graphics” is not an official term – I just use it to describe how shapes are drawn on these clocks:

Everything you see on this screen is made up of CIRCLES! Blank out part of a circle and you get an arc. Squish an arc and you get a line. This clock simply draws circles, lines, and arcs of different sizes at various points around the screen. It does it quickly. And it does it very, very well!

The effect of using circles is beautiful – shapes are smooth and precise, with no jagged edges or pixelation.

Beautiful circles with no jagged edges

Making “perfect” circles

I carry on as if it were some incredible new concept or discovery, like the Higgs boson. But in fact, the analog technique of constructing perfect circles, ovals, and lines on a CRT is very, very old. These figures are really part of a class of shapes called Lissajous Figures.

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BOO!

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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!

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The Invisible … Beam?

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One of the most exciting things you can do with a Scope Clock is to simply look at it from behind! In many CRTs, the anode coating (a conductive black surface sprayed onto the inside of the glass) doesn’t extend all the way to the screen – leaving a nice gap of clear glass from which to observe the beautiful electron beam.

Ha – you can put down your magnifying glasses now.

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