9 digit pulse counter

posted Apr 30th 2010 6:20am by
filed under: classic hacks, tool hacks

At roughly $20 to build, this 9 digit pulse counter is an excellent example of home built tools. The builder, [Josh] found himself repairing a device and in need of a pulse counter. With the components cheaply available, he just built his own. He says that it has a few limitations, like display brightness, but overall it seems to do the job well. You can download the PCB from his site.

[via MakeZine]

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11 Responses to 9 digit pulse counter

  • XenoMuta says:
    April 30, 2010 at 6:25 am

    Simply Sweet. Try putting some shades to the display, maybe negative photo film.

    Reply Report comment
  • osgeld says:
    April 30, 2010 at 7:02 am

    or drive the led correctly

    anyway good tool

    Reply Report comment
  • chisaipete says:
    April 30, 2010 at 7:35 am

    I second using shades on the display, it’ll help a lot!

    Reply Report comment
  • wickedshell says:
    April 30, 2010 at 7:53 am

    yes, but it does it’s job, he acknowledges the flaws, and has solutions if he were to do it again. So congrats to him. I like it

    Reply Report comment
  • komradebob says:
    April 30, 2010 at 8:17 am

    A few octal line drivers would up the IC component count but might actually be cheaper than discrete transistors. Feed the enable line with a variable freq clock and you can dim the display.

    Reply Report comment
  • Erik says:
    April 30, 2010 at 9:32 am

    Maybe I’m not seeing the “hack” here, but most counting ICs have an overflow which can cascade the count into another IC…

    Reply Report comment
  • Dennis says:
    April 30, 2010 at 11:49 am

    @Erik,
    if you want a hack take a $2.00 calculator and a couple components and make a 9 digit counter on the cheap.done that back in the 70′s with a high end HP cal.Basically using a transistor to pulse the + and 1 keys.

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  • malgan says:
    April 30, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    even easier with most cheap calculators if you enter 1 , press = then add 1 then press the = button again it increments the count so you can wire just the = button

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  • Ren says:
    April 30, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Pedometers can be found at most Dollar stores.
    substitute the pendulum switch for the input pulse,
    and you have a real cheap counter with an LCD display. But it will probably be limited to 1ppsor so.

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  • Ren says:
    April 30, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Oops!
    I meant 1 pps (pulse per second) or so!

    Reply Report comment
  • Hirudinea says:
    April 30, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    Homeland Security will be at your door shortly.

    Reply Report comment

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