[time-nuts] Heathkit clock available

Nick Sayer nsayer at kfu.com
Wed Aug 10 11:31:43 EDT 2016


Frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t make it a GPS clock. That would truly be a worthy successor to the GC-1000. Well, I do suspect I know why… and it’s not flattering. :)

Heck, if I thought I’d sell more than a handful, I’d make a desk-side GPS alarm clock and put it on Tindie. I’m actually fairly confident I could match their price. My problem is that I have no 3D modeling skills, so I don’t know what I’d do for a case for it. My usual trick of putting PCBs on the outside of extruded aluminum tubes (thanks go to Dave Jones for that) doesn’t seem like it would be apropos for this.

But for sure a GPS module, a handful of buttons, 7 7-seg LEDs (I’d display a 10 Hz digit), a little phototransistor dimming circuit and an ATMega… $99 retail? Certainly doable.


> On Aug 9, 2016, at 11:03 PM, Bill Hawkins <bill.iaxs at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> The GC-1000 was the Most Accurate Clock. This new GC-1006 is Most
> Reliable without mentioning accuracy.
> 
> The ad says that the standby oscillator can be calibrated by pushing
> some buttons on the back. Wondering how they do that almost makes me
> want to buy a simple clock that is $100 per pound. Perhaps there is a
> motor that turns a tuning capacitor to make the standby oscillator match
> the line frequency. More likely software changes the number of counts of
> some inexpensive XO per cycle.
> 
> I have an alarm clock with 2" seven segment LEDS that I can read without
> glasses. Its backup oscillator is LC, and somewhat faster than the line.
> It has carried me through the short outages I've experienced.
> 
> There's not enough info on what's behind the Santa Cruz rebirth of
> Heathkit. If I thought they were solid, I'd buy a kit to help prime the
> pump, so to speak. As it is, I'll be looking for neon-colored seven
> segment arrays a bit taller than those in the GC-1006.
> 
> No doubt, there are many schemes for disciplining 60 (or 50) Hz
> oscillators with 1 PPS.
> 
> TIA for any helpful comments.
> 
> Bill Hawkins
> 
> 
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