Soyuz Clock Drivers (Patreon)

It's time we return the Soyuz Clock to it's famous owner, Steve Jurvetson. But I wanted to return it with a little present, a clock driver so he can use and demonstrate his clock without the pile of HP equipment I had used. 

I made the clock drivers two ways: one the software way with an Atmel ATtiny 2313, and one the hardware way with a 2MHz quartz oscillator followed by a chain of 74LS390 counter/dividers.

They both started life as Fritzes

Then they became breadboard prototypes

Then they became soldered "PCBs", using Adafruit Perma-Proto boards to just solder the breadboard design. It looks like it popped right out of the computer screen!

I used a boost converter provided by a sponsor to generate the 28V, so we'll review this one and put it through its paces, see if it really does the 100W it's supposed to be capable off. It comes from ICStation which has all kind of very interesting goodies, much better than the eBay kind, but still incredibly inexpensive.

Both versions worked equally well and took the same time to design and build. The TTL version is more beautiful, but the Atmel version is smaller. Since it was all going to end up in a case, I chose the Atmel for the final version.

As usual, most of the hard work was in the mechanics, not the electronics. I also added a little soundboard from Adafruit that's connected to the alarm contacts, so it can do the alarm sound or masquerade as a Cuckoo clock. 

And here we go, nice Soyuz clock driver gift for Steve. 

He invited us to look at some of his new acquisitions, so I suspect we will end up with more space goodies to marvel at and restore!

Marc