Vintage Computers With A Real Turbo

November 3, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 42 Comments

In prior centuries, it was common practice to tie the operation of a program to a computer’s clock speed. As computers got faster and faster, the programs tied to that slower clock speed sometimes had trouble running. To patch the issue temporarily, some computers in the early 90s included a “TURBO” button which actually slowed the computer’s clock speed down in order to help older software run without breaking in often unpredictable ways. [Ted Fried] decided that he would turn this idea on its head, though, by essentially building a TURBO button into the hardware of old computers which would greatly increase the execution speed of these computers without causing software mayhem.

To accomplish this, he is running CPU emulators on Teensys (Teensies?), but they are configured to be a drop-in replacement for the physical CPU of several retro computers such as the Apple II, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 rather than an emulator for an entire system. It can be configured to run either in cycle-accurate mode, making it essentially identical to the computer’s original hardware, or it can be placed into an accelerated mode to take advantage of the Teensy 4.1’s 800 MHz processor, which is orders of magnitude faster than the original hardware. This allows (most of) the original hardware to still be used while running programs at wildly faster speeds without needing to worry about any programming hiccups due to the increased clock speed.

The video below demonstrates [Ted]’s creation running in an Apple II but he has several other cores for other retro computers. It’s certainly a unique way to squeeze more computing power out of these antique machines. Some Apple II computers had a 4 MHz clock which seems incredibly slow by modern standards, so the 800 MHz Teensy would have been considered wizardry by the standards of the time, but believe it or not, it’s actually necessary to go the other direction for some applications and slow this computer down to a 1 MHz crawl.

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Oscilloscope Clocks: Now In Color!

October 28, 2021 by Adam Zeloof 5 Comments

Ordinarily, when we hear the words “clock” and “oscilloscope” in the same sentence we conjure images of measuring a stable, repeating square wave that acts as the heartbeat of a system. Of course, that’s not the only meaning– there’s a much more fun and less useful one: using an oscilloscope to display the time.

That’s what [Wolfgang Friedrich] set out to do when he cobbled some protoboard, probes, and an FPGA into the Multi Color Oscilloscope Clock. Each digit on the clock is treated like a seven-segment display, made up of three horizontal bars and four vertical bars. The horizontal bars are generated by constant voltage at different levels, and the vertical bars are generated by quickly switching between two voltages. [Wolfgang] decided to use an R-2R resistor ladder DAC to create the appropriate analog signals from the FPGA’s digital outputs. For bonus points, each set of digits (hours, minutes, and seconds) are output concurrently through separate channels, so they can be displayed in different colors on the screen of his four-channel scope (the fourth channel is used for the points between numbers).

Misusing oscilloscopes in the name of fun has become a time-honored tradition– from Tennis for Two back in 1958 (which later became the beloved Pong) to the plethora of analog o-scope clocks we’ve seen, it’s clear that hackers just can’t get enough of the unique vector display style that a scope can provide. We love [Wolfgang]’s idea of using the scope’s channels to create a multi-color display, and we’re left wondering what kind of wacky waveforms we’ll be seeing next.

Halloween-Themed Talking Clock Relies On Pi Pico

October 27, 2021 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Many of us learn to read clocks at a young age, however, talking clocks eliminate the need to do that entirely. [Alberto] whipped up one of his own, in this case designed with some Halloween holiday spookiness.

A basic clock movement is used to display the time in the typical fashion. However, the movement also features a built-in trigger signal, which it sends to an attached microcontroller on the hour, every hour. The build relies on the Raspberry Pi Pico for sound, chosen for its USB programming interface and its 2 MB of onboard flash storage. Sound is stored in simple 16-bit WAV files, and played out to a speaker via a PWM output. Alternatively, a CircuitPython version of the code is available that uses MP3s instead. A light sensor is used to avoid triggering any sounds at night time that could disturb one’s sleep. The entire circuit can be built on a single-sided board. [Alberto] etched one at home in the old-fashioned way, though one could also order one online, too.

Halloween is an excellent time for hacks, and this year we have the Halloween Hackfest contest to show them off. It’s ending soon though, you have until the stroke of midnight Pacific time on Friday (that’s the moment Thursday night ends) to enter your Halloween-themed hacks.

Talking clocks have been around for some time, but are nevertheless a fun and educational project to build. We’ve seen some other great Halloween hacks lately, too. If you’ve been busy with projects this fall holiday, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

A tiny bedside clock that's packed with features.

ESP32 Clock Takes Time To Give Weather Info, Too

October 27, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

It’s fall in the northern hemisphere, so [Mike Rankin]’s kids are back in school and have returned to consulting him every morning about the weather and what they should wear. Since he’s no meteorologist, [Mike] built a beautifully dim and diminutive clock that does all the work for him, plus much more. It glows a lovely dark orange that’s perfect for the nightstand and those early morning interrogations.

In default mode, this clock displays the time, CO2 level, room temperature, and humidity in that eye-friendly orange. But wave your hand in front of the time of flight sensor, and it goes external, displaying the low and high temperatures for the day, plus the weather conditions forecast. After a few seconds of that, it goes back to default mode. The ESP fetches the time from an NTP server, then gets the weather from the OpenWeather API. The indoor weather comes from a combination sensor on the board.

Inside this tiny package is a beautifully-spun board with an ESP32 Pico D4 for a brain. In addition to the climate sensors there is a combination CO2/TVOC sensor (that’s total volatile organic compounds) to sniff out danger. There is also a pair of push buttons on the back and an ambient light sensor, but [Mike] isn’t using those just yet. Add in the Qwiic connector for future doo-dads, and you have quite the little gadget. Although the pictures make it look kind of big, you can see exactly how small it is in the demo video after the break.

[Mike] seems to like things tiny, and we admire that in a big way. Check out his positively Lilliputian ESP32 dev board.

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ESP32 Clock Pushes Outrun Graphics Over Composite

October 19, 2021 by Tom Nardi 24 Comments

We’ve covered plenty of clocks powered by the ESP32, but this one from [Marcio Teixeira] is really something special. Rather than driving a traditional physical display, the microcontroller is instead generating a composite video signal of an animated digital clock. This could be fed into whatever device you wish, but given the 80’s synthwave style it’s pumping out, you’ll probably want to find a suitably retro CRT to do it justice.

Specifically this is a variant of the “Dali” clock, where each digit seems to melt and morph into its successor. Though his version doesn’t necessarily share code with all the previous iterations, [Marcio] does credit the developers who have pulled off similar visual tricks going all the way back to 1979. Given the vintage of this particular animation, the neon skyline and infinite scrolling grid certainly feel like a perfect fit.

Want to add a little vaporwave vibe to your own workbench? Assuming you’ve already got a 80s style CRT, all you need is an ESP32 and two wires stuck into the composite video port. One goes to ground, and the other goes to the chip’s analog pin. Once everything is powered up, you’ll be able to configure the clock with a web-based interface. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

In the documentation, [Marcio] calls out a few open source projects which were instrumental to getting his clock off the ground. The pioneering work [bitluni] did to get video out of the ESP32 is something of a given, but he also sends a hat tip to [rossumur] for his collection of 8-bit game console emulators written for the microcontroller. Projects like this are a fantastic example of what’s possible when a community works together to truly push the envelope.

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LED Matrix Hourglass Knows Which Way Is Up

October 8, 2021 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

[Fearless Night]’s slick dual hourglass doesn’t just simulate sand with LEDs, it also emulates the effects of gravity on those simulated particles and offers a few different mode options.

The unit uses an Arduino (with ATMEGA328P) and an MPU-6050 accelerometer breakout board to sense orientation and movement, and the rest is just a matter of software. Both the Arduino and the MPU-6050 board are readily available and not particularly expensive, and the LED matrix displays are just 8×8 arrays of red/green LEDs, each driven by a HT16K33 LED controller IC.

The enclosure and stand are both 3D-printed, and a PCB not only mounts the components but also serves as a top cover, with the silkscreen layer of the PCB making for some handy labels. It’s a clever way to make the PCB pull double-duty, which is a technique [Fearless Night] also used on their earlier optical theremin design.

Those looking to make one of their own will find all the design files and source code handily available from the project page. It might not be able to tell time in the classical sense, but seeing the hourglass displays react to the device’s orientation is a really neat effect.

Steppers And ESP32 Make This Retro-Modern Flip-Clock Tick

October 2, 2021 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Before LEDs became cheap enough to be ubiquitous, flip-card displays were about the only way to get a digital clock. These entirely electromechanical devices had their own charm, and they have a certain retro cachet these days. Apart from yard sales and thrift stores, though, they’re a bit hard to source — unless you roll your own, of course.

Granted, [David Huang]’s ESP32-based flip clock is worlds apart from the flip cards of the “I Got You, Babe” era. Unfortunately, the video below is all we have to go on to get the story behind this clock, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. [David] started the build by making the flip cards themselves, a process that takes some topological tricks as well as a laser cutter. 3D-printed spools are loaded with the cards, which are then attached to frames that hold a stepper motor and a Hall-effect sensor. The ESP32 drives the steppers via L298N H-bridge drivers, but it’s hard to say if there’s an RTC chip or if the microcontroller is just getting time via an NTP server.

[David] might not be the only one trying to recapture that retro look, but we’ve got to hand it to him — it’s a great look, and it takes a clever maker to not only build a clock like this, but to make a video that explains it all so clearly without a single word of narration.

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