Maker Faire 2008: The Transistor Clock

IEEE Spectrum held a Maker Faire contest for digital clock makers. Keith Bayern won with his clock made only of transistors and other discrete components, with no integrated circuits. To find out more about Keith's clock go to www.transistor-clock.com.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• transistor
• digital
• clock
• contest
• maker
• faire
• fair
• 2008
• 08
• san
• mateo
• IEEE
• Spectrum
• diy
• electronics
• gadget

[madamerotten]

Now, I'd like to see a digital clock with the same 7-segment readouts, using only vacuum-tube triodes.

[ZerqTM]

Meh! he should have built it with vacume tubes instead :3

[super4chicken]

now build it in minecraft

[faffaflunkie]

Oh, how I wished you used Nixies for the display. Because of that you only get an A-.

[Wwallace67]

This is easy. You should do it with vacuum tubes. Oh, it looks like I'm not the first to make this observation.

[3yE]

If one set out to invent a bistable multivibrator anew from scratch, one better take time doing it. :)

[bedeone]

@plentylego Nope, in Europe it'll run slower since US uses 60hz and EU uses 50hz ;>

[plentylego]

so it wouldnt work in europe

[caticeasu]

this is some cool shit

[Esperantanaso]

This thing is extremely cool. :)

[anjwicks]

Could he have figured out how to do it with software first?

[GratefulJWB]

No, actually a Nixie version would be slightly easier by eliminating a couple hundred diodes used in the 10 to 7-segment conversion. The 1 of 10 outputs are already present. What would be needed is to use high voltage transistors in the 1 of 10 stages (with a 170v power supply) or use high voltage transistors throughout and power the entire clock from the same 170v power supply. There has been discussion of making a Nixie version in the Neonixie yahoo group.

[CesarTkgo69]

oooooh si

eso si que es la escencia

de la electronica jajajaja

Saludos, felicidades

[VideyoJunkei]

maybe...but switching speed and wear would not let it run long...

[Pujc]

Oh goodnes mee wow , awesome , thats amazing , unbelivable much work , great!!

[juice667]

I'm stunned.

[bilzoo2000]

i wonder if it could be made of relays...

[peterwilson69]

Wow! Awesome!

[mello67]

wow, a lot of work, cool

[adisharr]

Cool project :)

[Membrane556]

It would be huge bigger then a refrigerator though one could make a clock of manageable size if they used dekatron tubes.

[Membrane556]

Thats really cool I can see why it won though nixie tubes would have really matched the discrete circuitry though it would be more complex.

[callbigg]

Cool!

[Rarcoan]

A clock which mostly consists on transistors. In this video, he's using loads of transistors and resistor. Nowadays, we only program the digital clocks. It's quite impressive to make a clock like this.