[time-nuts] Mechanical clock sound pickup circuit

Peter Torry peter.torry at talktalk.net
Sat Dec 12 14:23:32 UTC 2015


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
>
>
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