WTF am I doing with my life, watching you soldering a clock kit in real time? Your videos are strangely addictive and interesting. I can't stop watching, no matter what you're talking about or doing...
Nice assembly technique! I like how you manage to hold the board and the component in place in one hand along with the solder, and the iron in the other. I have to resort to a set of helping hands!
I just finished this kit and it works fine. Thanks for the video. I will study it to find out how to set the time and alarms. When I do my soldering I always use a small fan to blow the smoke from the hot flux away to one side, so I don't end up breathing too much of it. I'm using 3 penlight cells to power it with about 4.5 Volts, and that seems to be quite sufficient.
I had to.... bought three of these and put one together this morning - powered up first time - I'll be building the other two with my son. Much more educational than video games and with the exception of the solder fumes likely healthier too. Thanks again Clive!
Got the same one last year as a project for my 15yr old son. Although the crystal died after a week but once replaced it works fine. It is still running. Was so impressed I ordered their battery backed version at £2.10
I got a rather nifty looking large digital desk clock in my office (we all did) It had date and timer on it too. Quite impressive I thought. I did notice that after a couple of months the date was losing days... when i cycled through the dates i found that 30 days hath September, April, June, November, January, March, May, July, August, October, December - except February which had 28 days.... Genius! Then the batteries all died one by one !
bigclivedotcom The other problem I used to have was holding the component in place while the solder solidified. It was unbearably painful fir my poor sensitive teenage hands. I can now hold the components, but always use my beautiful Bernstein ball joint vice bit.ly/2hStUcB It's so great to use that I look for excuses!
I bought a few of these kits (one for myself and several to give away) the christmas before last - finally got around to making mine and everything worked first go - miracle! Thanks for the tutorial Clive, I would never have worked out the chinglish "instructions"
Me when I get a diy kit: *meticulously follows the directions and circuit diagram, suffering through any chinglish in order to be as exact as possible* Clive: "Let's just mash everything in where it makes sense to." I wish I was this good at electronics.
The only way to get good is to study, and build these kits, they teach you a lot. Also get an arduion or two and play with them. Examine the example codes and you can easily learn the short version of C and C+ that they run on. Get some ESP8266's as well to play with the internet of things, great fun and the lua code is very much like the Arduino codes, in fact now you can program the ESP with the Arduino programer with just a bit of work.
Clive, chip pin alignment tool - table top and gently lean on the splayed pins until the alignment is achieveed. Been watching your vids for the past two days having found the mother-lode. The Postman is going to be busy end of this month with a cornucopia of bits that I didn't realise that I needed/craved until prompted by you. Keep up the good work. Ian
about 17:30 in when you went looking for your pin aligning tool I was so hoping you would produce a hammer.. as always an informative way to kill some time
I love that lead/tin solder. It's what I learned on. By the way, here in "the land of the free" (USA), any product that contains lead based solder has to be handled as "hazardous waste" when you want to get rid of it. You see old TV sets abandoned along the road, because you can't just put them in the trash and even most thrift stores won't accept them as donations. I saw a RUclips video where the cheapest way to dispose of them "legally" is to send them to China or third world countries. Many times they are just dumped on empty or swamp land, tossed in rivers, etc. The lead content of the soil and water is HUGE, but the few bucks that a USA "exporter" will pay goes a long way in an impoverished village.
Not sure if anyone else has said, but the caps across the crystal (calculated by C = 2CL - (CP + CI), where CP + CI can be estimated as 5pF) are the load capacitors and they cause/encourage the oscillation that makes a crystal do it's thing usefully. Wrong value caps, or no caps == no oscillation.
Clive, the cheapie IC sockets are easy to seat. Push them in, flick the opposite corner pins over, THEN solder the OPPOSITE corner pins. If it's seated correctly, then unfold or "unflick" the opposite corner pins and solder them.
I got one of those after watching your video, never did get it working, so I contacted the seller who sent me another, that one worked great, I think the processor was nuked en-route as I did a great job of soldering.
I recently started learning to solder myself by following Clive's advice and making some kits. My first was a super-cheap kit with just a couple of flashing LEDs. I killed an LED by overheating it with the soldering iron. Luckily, I had a spare, and the rest of it went off without hitch. The next was the very clock that I've just seen Clive put together. It works great, but I couldn't figure out the settings and it was too damn noisy, so it's resting at the back of a cupboard. Next was a transistor tester, although it actually does a lot more than that. It's quite a sophisticated device, and useful in future electronics work. I've got one more on order, and it's by far my most ambitious to date. An oscilloscope! :-)
you solder basically the same as i do. i bought 3 different clock kit from various sellers and found 1 half worked, 1 did absolutely nothing and 1 worked perfectly. the one that works gain about 1 second per week. luckily it is the clck that i hoped would work, it had time date temp alarm and 60 led in a circle that showed seconds in about 20 different various. patterns. sill worked perfectly after about 1 year. the other two so-called clocks are in some fill site somewhere. :) i can turn chime on/off and can even set chime between certain hours only and not at other times.
A company that sells wigs and random electronic components? What an oddly specific combination. By that logic, I could make millions selling cricket larvae and assorted pharmaceutical supplies.
When learning how to solder at college [C&G] was told not to melt the solder with iron but heat componets/ wire so that it melted the solder. the test to pass exam was to remove chips/ components and refit then it was tested to check it still worked.
lol I am building the same kit with you...it makes me smile....second attempt!!! I have built much more complex kits with no issues...lets see if round 2 works...love your videos clive!! P.S the drink tonight is Rum and coke :)
The exception to carrying solder is when soldering SMD chips. Basically, ome fixes the chip in place with Bluetak, put lots of flux over one set of pins. Then carry a blob of solder over to the pins and run it along that side. With a little practice, all the pins will be soldered without any solder bridges between them. Shame the SMD soldering practice kits don't have more chips.
Speaking of countdown timers, I needed a few of those for my wife who has to take medication then wait for a certain time for it to take effect before she can open her eyes once more (eye drops for glaucoma) I looked around on Ebay and some Chinese shops bout could not find exactly what I wanted, but I did find a fellow who had the diagrams and code to build small ones using the smallest Arduinos and a little 4 digit display. So I built her one for morning and one for evening (different times required) and one for our car as I pull her behind our RV when traveling and I need to run the engine for 5 minutes at each stop to keep the transmission lubricated. They are quite simple to build and run great on 9 volt batteries.
IT uses AT89s51/at89c51. as this 8051 variant has very weak pullup feature, hence it uses the shunting arrangement where the display segments are turned off by providing alternate patch thru the microcontroller.
Tom Wilkinson I doubt it - just for giggles I built a "bomb" timer like in the movies and the uC made the silly "wheres that damn hero when we need him/her" chirping sound for each second the clock counted down. However in a lot of TV shows and movies I've seen the common garden variety kitchen timer with two rows of number buttons and a pair of control buttons made by micronta exhibit this behaviour and I actually have one in the kitchen. It has no beep function except when the time expires, so the each second chirp had to have been put into the film in post
I've just received four of these kits as I'm experimenting with a "quick and dirty" way of powering up incandescent filament bulb displays via optoisolators in place of the LED display. The whole lot came wrapped in a very static-inducing sheet of packaging!
MegaWayneD One slight downside of a multiplexed display is that if it's not fast enough it may cause a slight beat frequency on your triacs that manifests itself as a slight flicker. But only time will tell.
MegaWayneD Definitely worth a try, and if you do make a matrix of opto-isolators you can always try it with different modules to see if you can find one with a faster scan rate. When I built a fairground game with large tungsten displays I used an M5450 LED driver since it is direct drive. I actually drove the triacs directly with the outputs.
That's worth knowing, thanks! The thing I'm working on is a bunch of car "festoon" bulbs arranged in the 7-segment way so it resembles RCA numitron filament displays.
@1FireyPheonix totally understandable. :) it's easy enough to mix them up because they contain what the Chinese call Han zi, and the Japanese call kanji (hear the similarity?) ---- warning TL;DR rant approaching --- they literally are the same characters often times with a similar or identical meaning. Hence numbers. The only thing that changed, just like had happened across mainland China for hundreds of years before, the sounds that fit to the characters changed. This is also why Japanese kanji have what's known as an On and Kun reading, giving two pronunciations for a character. One the original Chinese, and one the Japanese pronunciation. Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese use strictly Han zi and other symbols, whereas Japanese include the kanji, and 2 distinct syllabaries (like alphabets) call Hiragana, and katakana... These two extra sets of characters help Japanese text to stand apart from Chinese. It helps if you know both too I suppose lol :P
just watching randomly through your videos and got here now. AFAIK the capacitors at the quarzoscillator are there to help it start up oscillating. only does not work if they are really off, but often even works without them, solely by copper line capacities...
The film over the display is placed onto the the acrylic front clear section before the display is assembled. Any film covered surface like dvd players TV's and even new mobile phones is placed on after assembly
Clive, I have just found for this kit the note "8-20 o\'clock chime can be turned off" which I assume means that unless turned off the chime operates only between 08:00 and 20:00.
A habit I've gotten into is to cut the ends off the leads of R's and C's while they're still in the endcaps, because the sticky residue would otherwise scrape off in the holes and get in the way of soldering.
>Hand etched PCBS Have you tried sending your PCBs to somewhere like Oshpark or DirtyPCBs to see what you get back? The quality for the price has been fantastic in my experience.
...Back in the1970's...Digi-key sold stuff like this....but you had to make your own CB from the parts in the kit and it used a 3 resistor voltage divider across the120 line for low voltage power....red LEDS 7-seg...then later a kit with vac-fluor tubes....
Thanks Clive, I built this yesterday but did not know how to set the time, now thanks to you its done :) :ps, my wife shouted through to me ( whats that annoying noise).. so I have de-soldered the buzzer, we are both happy now :)
+Ron Thompson My wife threw the circuit board away by mistake, it was in a small brown jiffy bag, she didn't look inside and thought it was rubbish :( I have had to order a new one :)
Love the 50 herz hum! I love that sound, all i hear in my "Lab" are ear-busting high-frequency noisesfrom switch mode supplies... :( Thats the one thing im looking forward to aging, so i dont hear it anymore! XD
20:57 - "...I really haven't a clue that this thing is..." Go ask the college kid that designed it for his electronics class project that this Chinese company ripped it off from...LOL
Ah eBay sellers and packing. Personal favourite: One of those plastic shipping bags 5% full of chips in individual polythene bags, and a bit of packing foam thrown on top for luck. Many bent/missing pins, much static, so wow.
spoonymccheese or fragile magnetics wrapped in bubble wrap tossed into a plastic shipping bag, not once but twice. Both cores ended up arriving in not so useful little bits instead of two useful halves!
Oh dear I recently took apart my old broken Commodore 64 and in the troubleshooting process I cleaned all the IC pins with sandpaper, I don't know if I got lucky but that didn't kill it with static after I swapped out the bad video chip
It would be a really neat project to cover the clock to large display made from discrete "straw hat" LEDs. One of your older videos had some really nice prototype panels.
those little buzzers that seem to be everywhere are actually very simple electromechanical bells with the metal diaphragm also switching the coil.... I took one apart to see why I couldn't get one to sing.
I hope you will do your reviews on the new kits from radio shack,they have a line of kits for 19.99 .if you haven't already done them. A lot of us buy some of our kits ,from your review or how to videos. Thanks I still trying to find more of your review ,etc.
I bought 3 of the other clock you built. I built one, and never got it to work. Checked polarity, checked solder joints, etc. Still didn't work. Figured the controller was cooked by the static in the foam.
the two little caps set the crystal a-oscillating I think. I agree with others, nimble finger work :) I would have burned myself twenty times doing that.
When I first watched this, I was wondering, "Why did they bother to include a socket for the IC instead of just putting it directly on the board?" Then I watched Clive solder the thing going right down the rows. That's when the light bulb went on, "Oh, so an inexperienced amateur won't cook the chip while soldering it in place." I'm going to assume, Clive, that you did it this way because you knew you were just soldering the socket, not the actual chip. When my dad taught me to solder, he was adamant about that concept: *Never* solder adjacent pins on an IC one right after another. *Always* solder diagonally opposite pins and, even then, it's a good idea to allow a few seconds cooling time after soldering each pin. When possible, keep a finger flat against the top of the chip while you're working. If it gets too hot to keep your finger on it, it's time to stop and let it cool before proceeding. You might consider adding a caption to your video to point this out. :)
+Greg Wolking On the rare occasion I solder a chip in directly I stagger the soldering on opposing pins and also pause mid soldering to let the chip cool down. A socket is always preferred.
+bigclivedotcom I had figured as much, Clive, as I stated previously. It's quite clear from your videos that you really know your stuff. Thank you, sir, for taking the time to answer my inquiry. I thoroughly enjoy your videos. In particular, I find the calm, measured, "thinking out loud" style of your narration to be a refreshing change from many other "how-to" RUclipsrs who seem to think they must become some kind of "character" telling jokes, cracking wise, getting ridiculously upset, and so on. I have often wondered whether you plan what you intend to cover before you start recording or just go completely off-the-cuff every time. If the latter, it _sounds_ like the former, as you're very good at staying on point and not needlessly repeating yourself (AvE comes immediately to mind in that regard). You may count me as a fan, sir, and I applaud your endeavors!
Total novice here, I had actually ordered two of these so I could bugger up one of them and perhaps make the second one work. The first one didn't work due to my dodgy soldering and that night I saw this video, so today I attempted my second one and finally managed to produce something that doesn't look like a hedgehog and actually works. I think I might change the power supply widget though as I wanted to be able to plug it into a usb connection and so far it goes into a bread board and then into a USB connection which isn't ideal. Clive just sails through these videos, with double joints and a skill that makes my attempts look like a five year old poking things with a big stick. One day.... ;)
Kits like these are perfect for practising soldering though and are cheap! You could use a micro usb breakout board like this www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Female-MICRO-USB-to-DIP-5-Pin-Breakout-board-UK-STOCK-/252737357565?hash=item3ad85206fd:g:ZRAAAOSwjDZYgx05 for your USB connection!
Big Clive ,do u think a weller 40 watt soldering pen is to much,and what soldering pen do you use,I am sure you got good reason to use that pen with all the work you do.with it. A lot of pens tell you the temps.they run at that weller I am looking at is 900 degrees which seems a lot .my last two soldering pens were 30 watt pens.i have been soldering for over forty years and I been away from it for a while things change.
+Ron Thompson 40 watt seems quite high, except for soldering big connections. Nothing too much has changed in soldering, but try and avoid the lead-free solder.
Dear Big Clive, I have a similar clock to this and wanted to hook it up to a solar panel AND lithium ion phone battery to charge the battery during the day while running the clock, and run the clock from the battery at night etc.. Any tips? I'd imagine it would be simple enough to do?
What's the best way to power this? I tried 2 CR2023's at 6V, and it didn't work. But a USB wall wart and cable at 5V worked perfectly. Anyway to make batteries work?
At 50 mA, it would drain a CR2023 in about 4 hours even if it would work. If you must have battery, I would suggest AA or C cells, and definitely rechargables because even those wouldn't last longer than a few days. But it would be in the realm of possible, just not very practical.
Mr. CLIVE. Please tell me where to find good soldier. I bought 2 full rolls .8mm 60/40 flux but someone lied. I made the 4 big 7 segment clock like you did but the soulder turns gray. I've soldiered for many years but this new no-lead soldier is crap. Please help.
Built a couple of those clock kits. The one like yours worked till I inadvertently hooked it up to my 12 volt power bank instead of the 5. The other had soldering iron problems. You see, I spend most of my time in a lift recliner because of my body condition, at any rate, I thought it would be a smart idea to buy one of those little cheap USB soldering irons. They do work GREAT for just tinning a lead or something but building a kit? Not so much. Seems they just keep heating up and suddenly the traces and pads are seperating and your kit is pretty much garbage. Ruined four or five different kits with that before it became a little used item. I finally bought a cheap mains type with thermostat on the handle taking the tips like the ones you use. It does a nice job if you are careful but I have yet to buy any more kits. I do have decor that I built up such as little Christmas trees and heart we put on the dash of our Motor Home while traveling and when we spend the winter months in Arizona to keep away from the dreaded snow of North and South Dakota.
Who the hell knows, some days I just ramble on, and on and on. I once considered myself a writer, even had a few short stories published, one in a magazine, another in a sci-fi anthology, but I gave it up and turned to computers, then to arduinos, then oh well you get the picture, hell I have been a soldier, a cop, a clerk to a district judge, and a carpenter. I have been a wood worker, a painter and a few other things I shan't go into, but the young in our family remember me the most as that uncle who tells the best ghost stories ever.
I bought three of those recently in order to practice soldering. I already build one but it is not really working. The speaker emits a constant beep and the display is lit up but show no time. I am pretty sure that I followed your video exactly. Is it possible I broke something while soldering or could be a part faulty? Since I don't have a power supply I cut off one plug of an USB cable and power the clock that way. I really like to know what's the problem so I can understand what's going on since I am still a beginner in the field of electronics.
Hi Clive, After watching this video, I went out and got this kit to solder as my first practice. It was great following along! Is it bad that I am learning to solder "Clive-style" holding the solder and PCB in one hand?
I bought one of these as im trying to get into electronic projects and teach myself soldering. Amazingly I have it running! I want to power it off of battery and have put three AA batteries together (4.6V) but it's draining them in a matter of hours. I KNOW NOTHING about electronics so wondered if you might know why? (I am assuming it has to do with draw and amps etc) ... also if you have any ideas about what batteries would be required to keep it battery powered if possible that would be great!
Thanks for the quick and useful response! I bought it to practice soldering so its not the end of the world that it doesn't with a battery because of the current draw... so know I know that current is key to how long a battery will last :) THE MORE YOU KNOW!
Amazing video as always! Just wondering, you've inspired me to start soldering! Just wondering if you can recommend a half decent sdering iron to choose for a beginner, but one I will feel happy soldering with as I get better! Many thanks and keep up the good work!
Justin Parker A good general purpose iron that will serve you well will be an Antex XS. You can probably get one from Maplin, but I'd recommend using lead based solder which Maplin don't seem to sell. If you can get the iron along with a suitable stand that's even better.
It's unfortunate but I was sold some quite rare vintage sound chips embedded in what only LOOKED like dissipative foam, Without a proper static shield bag too. Most of the cheap bits I get come incorrectly packaged. If you need to build something you might come to rely upon I'd suggest other sources. I still love cheap eBay deals though. They keep my hobbies going.
+finro If you're referring to the soldering of the SIL resistor then I just solder one pin initially and then check to see if it is sitting correctly on the PCB before soldering the rest. It's also important to align the dot on one end of the SIL with the marking on the PCB.
Another fun build by Master Clive! Question asked: "...why use 2 little caps with the crystal"? Answer: You're actually building an oscillator circuit, using a crystal, some capacitors, and the internal circuitry of your microcontroller. If you don't use the caps, your clocking won't work. The values are calculated based on the properties of the crystal, as described in datasheet from Microchip "Crystal Oscillator Basics and Crystal Selection for rfPICTM and PICmicro® Devices" ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/appnotes/00826a.pdf
And, if this is demonetized, we could all benefit from a periodic Mission Impossible theme music! And you could play it from an ‘80’s style 8-bit music generator, sold as a kit on eBay!
They're better now, but in the past technical and scientific channels would get videos demonetised fairly regularly. Usually when non technical people reported them as looking dangerous.
You sir are the Bob Ross of soldering. Please put more kit-building vids up. ;]=
XombyCraft Couldn't have said better myself. A soothing voice, technical knowledge and a good sense of humor. Can't get much better than that.
He’s not the bob Ross of soldering .He’s more a Da Vinci Highly intelligent and amusing. Bob Ross sooooooooo boring
Those parts are protected from ESD using the Shenzhen Damp Air technique. The air in the bag is humid enough to have a dissipative effect. ;)
+Godfrey Poon lol
Lol 😂
WTF am I doing with my life, watching you soldering a clock kit in real time? Your videos are strangely addictive and interesting. I can't stop watching, no matter what you're talking about or doing...
youtubkeeper Same idk either why am i watching this
where has the *time* gone
same here, i think it has to do with how expresses himself and relate what he is doing.
He would have been an outstanding high school electronics teacher!!!
Utube us full of these. Auto repair, small engines... it is always therapeutic to watch someone else work. Puts me to sleep. ;-)
Nice assembly technique! I like how you manage to hold the board and the component in place in one hand along with the solder, and the iron in the other. I have to resort to a set of helping hands!
"Soldering kits are quite therapeutic" - I totally agree
Who needs a helping hand? Clive, that is next level soldering, holding the board and the solder in same hand....my hat is doffed to you sir.
I just finished this kit and it works fine. Thanks for the video. I will study it to find out how to set the time and alarms. When I do my soldering I always use a small fan to blow the smoke from the hot flux away to one side, so I don't end up breathing too much of it. I'm using 3 penlight cells to power it with about 4.5 Volts, and that seems to be quite sufficient.
I have never been so amazed by a video that shows how to complete such a simple kit! Keep making these videos!!!
I had to.... bought three of these and put one together this morning - powered up first time - I'll be building the other two with my son. Much more educational than video games and with the exception of the solder fumes likely healthier too. Thanks again Clive!
Scott Warmbier there's nothing wrong with video games you middle aged old sack
Guilty as charged DerpBomb Gaming... All kidding aside he gets a lot from games like Mine Craft and Tereria...
Got the same one last year as a project for my 15yr old son.
Although the crystal died after a week but once replaced it works fine.
It is still running.
Was so impressed I ordered their battery backed version at £2.10
I got a rather nifty looking large digital desk clock in my office (we all did) It had date and timer on it too. Quite impressive I thought. I did notice that after a couple of months the date was losing days... when i cycled through the dates i found that 30 days hath September, April, June, November, January, March, May, July, August, October, December - except February which had 28 days.... Genius!
Then the batteries all died one by one !
8'55" solder the middle lead of the transistor then check it's square - what a brilliant idea. Thank you Bigclive.
Have been giving soldering workshops all day today.
And agree with everything you said . . and so should my students ;)
.... i cant mount components straight even with a pair of helping hands and clive can do everything with his left hand.
So much road ahead
Don't worry, the more you do it the easier it gets.
bigclivedotcom
The other problem I used to have was holding the component in place while the solder solidified. It was unbearably painful fir my poor sensitive teenage hands. I can now hold the components, but always use my beautiful Bernstein ball joint vice bit.ly/2hStUcB It's so great to use that I look for excuses!
"and Clive can do everything with his left hand."
Don't tell his wife that. 😀
@@BedsitBob Not _really_ a worry...
I bought a few of these kits (one for myself and several to give away) the christmas before last - finally got around to making mine and everything worked first go - miracle! Thanks for the tutorial Clive, I would never have worked out the chinglish "instructions"
"uh oh it looks strongly chineseish" BAHAHAHA
+Oriole Advent i lost it at this point lol
Me when I get a diy kit: *meticulously follows the directions and circuit diagram, suffering through any chinglish in order to be as exact as possible*
Clive: "Let's just mash everything in where it makes sense to."
I wish I was this good at electronics.
+Chris Roller You're already on your way to that point. Time to treat yourself to some random Chinese ebay kits.
The only way to get good is to study, and build these kits, they teach you a lot. Also get an arduion or two and play with them. Examine the example codes and you can easily learn the short version of C and C+ that they run on. Get some ESP8266's as well to play with the internet of things, great fun and the lua code is very much like the Arduino codes, in fact now you can program the ESP with the Arduino programer with just a bit of work.
Clive, chip pin alignment tool - table top and gently lean on the splayed pins until the alignment is achieveed.
Been watching your vids for the past two days having found the mother-lode. The Postman is going to be busy end of this month with a cornucopia of bits that I didn't realise that I needed/craved until prompted by you. Keep up the good work.
Ian
+0PAIx I've got a proper "hand exerciser" type pin aligner, but it was hiding when I made the video. Yeah, the postman is here almost every day.
Really appreciate all the good tips on soldering, very helpful indeed.
I cant stop watching your videos! You make me want to learn about everything!!! You are a true genious sir!
about 17:30 in when you went looking for your pin aligning tool I was so hoping you would produce a hammer.. as always an informative way to kill some time
Love watching your video's very therapeutic. Best wishes from Hamilton.
I just put one of these together and was about to give up on figuring out how to set it when i found your video. Thank you for the help.
I love that lead/tin solder. It's what I learned on. By the way, here in "the land of the free" (USA), any product that contains lead based solder has to be handled as "hazardous waste" when you want to get rid of it. You see old TV sets abandoned along the road, because you can't just put them in the trash and even most thrift stores won't accept them as donations.
I saw a RUclips video where the cheapest way to dispose of them "legally" is to send them to China or third world countries. Many times they are just dumped on empty or swamp land, tossed in rivers, etc. The lead content of the soil and water is HUGE, but the few bucks that a USA "exporter" will pay goes a long way in an impoverished village.
That's why I only buy my solder from China, where I can get the lead/tin combo that works! Tried some of that leadless crap, never liked the results.
i buy a 60 tin 40 lead from the hardware store for use
You mean REAL solder!
Not sure if anyone else has said, but the caps across the crystal (calculated by C = 2CL - (CP + CI), where CP + CI can be estimated as 5pF) are the load capacitors and they cause/encourage the oscillation that makes a crystal do it's thing usefully. Wrong value caps, or no caps == no oscillation.
The 30pf capacitors are in series with the xtal; they provide the correct load for the xtal and the necessary phase shift to make the oscillator work.
Not exactly. I was told by an engineer some years ago that those were added to ensure that the oscillator would start reliably.
Clive, the cheapie IC sockets are easy to seat. Push them in, flick the opposite corner pins over, THEN solder the OPPOSITE corner pins. If it's seated correctly, then unfold or "unflick" the opposite corner pins and solder them.
Big Clive the Bob Ross of Electronics :D could watch your videos all day!
I got one of those after watching your video, never did get it working, so I contacted the seller who sent me another, that one worked great, I think the processor was nuked en-route as I did a great job of soldering.
I recently started learning to solder myself by following Clive's advice and making some kits.
My first was a super-cheap kit with just a couple of flashing LEDs. I killed an LED by overheating it with the soldering iron. Luckily, I had a spare, and the rest of it went off without hitch.
The next was the very clock that I've just seen Clive put together. It works great, but I couldn't figure out the settings and it was too damn noisy, so it's resting at the back of a cupboard.
Next was a transistor tester, although it actually does a lot more than that. It's quite a sophisticated device, and useful in future electronics work.
I've got one more on order, and it's by far my most ambitious to date. An oscilloscope! :-)
then you aren't that far from making your very own SEM, it would be so fun to do it.
you solder basically the same as i do. i bought 3 different clock kit from various sellers and found 1 half worked, 1 did absolutely nothing and 1 worked perfectly. the one that works gain about 1 second per week. luckily it is the clck that i hoped would work, it had time date temp alarm and 60 led in a circle that showed seconds in about 20 different various. patterns. sill worked perfectly after about 1 year. the other two so-called clocks are in some fill site somewhere. :) i can turn chime on/off and can even set chime between certain hours only and not at other times.
Hello clive enjoy your tardown vids,particularly like the way that you hold the boards and solder in one hand,no need for a helping hands clamp.
john hill I'm still trying to get that technic down too . .
Requires lots of practice though :)
A company that sells wigs and random electronic components? What an oddly specific combination.
By that logic, I could make millions selling cricket larvae and assorted pharmaceutical supplies.
Nah fam making Saab hubcaps and flower seeds is where it's at.
I imagine they live close to both manufacturers
Quite funny that they used 8 for B and 0 for D where they could have used b and d respectively.
That's what I thought too when I saw it.
When learning how to solder at college [C&G] was told not to melt the solder with iron but heat componets/ wire so that it melted the solder. the test to pass exam was to remove chips/ components and refit then it was tested to check it still worked.
Thanks for sparing your valuable time to show us how assembling should be done. Can you show how to add a relay to the timer please!
Interesting!
Replace the buzzer with the coil of a relay and when the alarm goes off it'll run the relay
Very nice. Thanks dear
Thanks bigclive i have just bought this kit and i think you have saved me a lot of time with the set routine.
I've just bought one of these clock kits.
Thanks for figuring out how to set it.
I'd have spent forever figuring it out, while getting 😡
I love rising clamp terminals. They are so, so, so much more functional and easier to use.
lol I am building the same kit with you...it makes me smile....second attempt!!! I have built much more complex kits with no issues...lets see if round 2 works...love your videos clive!! P.S the drink tonight is Rum and coke :)
Looks like a bomb...
Only in Texas.
+Bright Spark I think you owe Clive $15m now
+bigclivedotcom this comment wins everything. Edit: Your reply, not spark's comment.
imagine, replacing buzzer with relay and detonator...(thus making sound signal trigger bomb....).then accidently shorting a button...and going kablewi
totally impractical for a bomb
The exception to carrying solder is when soldering SMD chips. Basically, ome fixes the chip in place with Bluetak, put lots of flux over one set of pins. Then carry a blob of solder over to the pins and run it along that side. With a little practice, all the pins will be soldered without any solder bridges between them. Shame the SMD soldering practice kits don't have more chips.
Great Video Clive Very Random But Cool Kit. Keep up the great work. Nick.
Speaking of countdown timers, I needed a few of those for my wife who has to take medication then wait for a certain time for it to take effect before she can open her eyes once more (eye drops for glaucoma) I looked around on Ebay and some Chinese shops bout could not find exactly what I wanted, but I did find a fellow who had the diagrams and code to build small ones using the smallest Arduinos and a little 4 digit display. So I built her one for morning and one for evening (different times required) and one for our car as I pull her behind our RV when traveling and I need to run the engine for 5 minutes at each stop to keep the transmission lubricated. They are quite simple to build and run great on 9 volt batteries.
Love the smell of melting solder in the morning :-)
Real solder with lead and tin.
And flux in the core, don forget the flux
IT uses AT89s51/at89c51. as this 8051 variant has very weak pullup feature, hence it uses the shunting arrangement where the display segments are turned off by providing alternate patch thru the microcontroller.
This is the kit they use in movie prop bombs haha
metalmaniacmat nearly, usually in movies they beep each second they countdown, as if no-one can hear or notice them! lol
jusb1066 Pretty sure that's post production :p
Tom Wilkinson I doubt it - just for giggles I built a "bomb" timer like in the movies and the uC made the silly "wheres that damn hero when we need him/her" chirping sound for each second the clock counted down. However in a lot of TV shows and movies I've seen the common garden variety kitchen timer with two rows of number buttons and a pair of control buttons made by micronta exhibit this behaviour and I actually have one in the kitchen. It has no beep function except when the time expires, so the each second chirp had to have been put into the film in post
You'd want to do the sound in post anyway to get a clean recording. Recording sound on location is challenging, the less you have to do it the better.
I've just received four of these kits as I'm experimenting with a "quick and dirty" way of powering up incandescent filament bulb displays via optoisolators in place of the LED display. The whole lot came wrapped in a very static-inducing sheet of packaging!
MegaWayneD One slight downside of a multiplexed display is that if it's not fast enough it may cause a slight beat frequency on your triacs that manifests itself as a slight flicker. But only time will tell.
Yeah, I'm not totally convinced it will work but I figured at this price it was worth a try.
MegaWayneD Definitely worth a try, and if you do make a matrix of opto-isolators you can always try it with different modules to see if you can find one with a faster scan rate.
When I built a fairground game with large tungsten displays I used an M5450 LED driver since it is direct drive. I actually drove the triacs directly with the outputs.
That's worth knowing, thanks! The thing I'm working on is a bunch of car "festoon" bulbs arranged in the 7-segment way so it resembles RCA numitron filament displays.
MegaWayneD You can multiplex tungsten lamps too. That's what fruit machines do to drive either 64 (8x8) or 128 (8 x 16) lamps.
@1FireyPheonix totally understandable. :) it's easy enough to mix them up because they contain what the Chinese call Han zi, and the Japanese call kanji (hear the similarity?)
---- warning TL;DR rant approaching ---
they literally are the same characters often times with a similar or identical meaning. Hence numbers.
The only thing that changed, just like had happened across mainland China for hundreds of years before, the sounds that fit to the characters changed. This is also why Japanese kanji have what's known as an On and Kun reading, giving two pronunciations for a character. One the original Chinese, and one the Japanese pronunciation.
Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese use strictly Han zi and other symbols, whereas Japanese include the kanji, and 2 distinct syllabaries (like alphabets) call Hiragana, and katakana...
These two extra sets of characters help Japanese text to stand apart from Chinese. It helps if you know both too I suppose lol :P
just watching randomly through your videos and got here now.
AFAIK the capacitors at the quarzoscillator are there to help it start up oscillating.
only does not work if they are really off, but often even works without them, solely by copper line capacities...
The film over the display is placed onto the the acrylic front clear section before the display is assembled. Any film covered surface like dvd players TV's and even new mobile phones is placed on after assembly
I just desoldered the beeper. Silence is golden
Very Cool, You did a fantastic Job. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I find it oddly relaxing watching you do this, Big Clive!
Clive, I have just found for this kit the note "8-20 o\'clock chime can be turned off" which I assume means that unless turned off the chime operates only between 08:00 and 20:00.
Didn't you get the 4 pounds of C4 and the bag of ball bearings with it? :P
Mark van Werven it came from China, dude...accessories sold separately.
The translations on the manual are priceless though, "place the round bearingballs in cute pattern", I mean, my chinese is worse, but still...
A habit I've gotten into is to cut the ends off the leads of R's and C's while they're still in the endcaps, because the sticky residue would otherwise scrape off in the holes and get in the way of soldering.
>Hand etched PCBS
Have you tried sending your PCBs to somewhere like Oshpark or DirtyPCBs to see what you get back? The quality for the price has been fantastic in my experience.
...Back in the1970's...Digi-key sold stuff like this....but you had to make your own CB from the parts in the kit and it used a 3 resistor voltage divider across the120 line for low voltage power....red LEDS 7-seg...then later a kit with vac-fluor tubes....
I really like the settings menu, easy to learn and uses only two buttons.
That's more than I was expecting, actually.
I ordered a different clock kit and it's all surface mount components with a 0.5mm pitch microprocessor. That would make a great video.
Thanks Clive, I built this yesterday but did not know how to set the time, now thanks to you its done :) :ps, my wife shouted through to me ( whats that annoying noise).. so I have de-soldered the buzzer, we are both happy now :)
Let me no how that new kit turns out for you, do you have radio shack their,they seem to have a new line of kit there,
+Ron Thompson My wife threw the circuit board away by mistake, it was in a small brown jiffy bag, she didn't look inside and thought it was rubbish :( I have had to order a new one :)
+Ron Thompson No radio shack, I use ebay only :)
The way you use your fingers ,bet the lady’s love you 😍
Love the 50 herz hum! I love that sound, all i hear in my "Lab" are ear-busting high-frequency noisesfrom switch mode supplies... :( Thats the one thing im looking forward to aging, so i dont hear it anymore! XD
20:57 - "...I really haven't a clue that this thing is..." Go ask the college kid that designed it for his electronics class project that this Chinese company ripped it off from...LOL
Big Clive, the Bob Ross of the electronics world!
Nothing like putting a kit together with a wee dram of single-malt. Recommend by your brother!
Ah eBay sellers and packing. Personal favourite: One of those plastic shipping bags 5% full of chips in individual polythene bags, and a bit of packing foam thrown on top for luck. Many bent/missing pins, much static, so wow.
spoonymccheese or fragile magnetics wrapped in bubble wrap tossed into a plastic shipping bag, not once but twice. Both cores ended up arriving in not so useful little bits instead of two useful halves!
Oh I want this kit.
I love easy kits like this.
I like the Elenco kits they are easy to follow kits. :)
Oh dear I recently took apart my old broken Commodore 64 and in the troubleshooting process I cleaned all the IC pins with sandpaper, I don't know if I got lucky but that didn't kill it with static after I swapped out the bad video chip
It would be a really neat project to cover the clock to large display made from discrete "straw hat" LEDs. One of your older videos had some really nice prototype panels.
those little buzzers that seem to be everywhere are actually very simple electromechanical bells with the metal diaphragm also switching the coil.... I took one apart to see why I couldn't get one to sing.
Impressive number of features for a cheap kit!
I hope you will do your reviews on the new kits from radio shack,they have a line of kits for 19.99 .if you haven't already done them. A lot of us buy some of our kits ,from your review or how to videos. Thanks I still trying to find more of your review ,etc.
Can x-ray machines damage electronics, when going through customs?
They're very low energy, so they shouldn't.
I tend to use long nose pliers when straightening the pins
19:00 I too hate those 'protection leaf' terminals but if they don't screw them down for transport the damn' screws fall out.
That was a very interesting video. I hope you find time to do some more kit builds in the future.
I bought 3 of the other clock you built. I built one, and never got it to work. Checked polarity, checked solder joints, etc. Still didn't work. Figured the controller was cooked by the static in the foam.
the two little caps set the crystal a-oscillating I think. I agree with others, nimble finger work :) I would have burned myself twenty times doing that.
When I first watched this, I was wondering, "Why did they bother to include a socket for the IC instead of just putting it directly on the board?"
Then I watched Clive solder the thing going right down the rows. That's when the light bulb went on, "Oh, so an inexperienced amateur won't cook the chip while soldering it in place."
I'm going to assume, Clive, that you did it this way because you knew you were just soldering the socket, not the actual chip. When my dad taught me to solder, he was adamant about that concept:
*Never* solder adjacent pins on an IC one right after another.
*Always* solder diagonally opposite pins and, even then, it's a good idea to allow a few seconds cooling time after soldering each pin. When possible, keep a finger flat against the top of the chip while you're working. If it gets too hot to keep your finger on it, it's time to stop and let it cool before proceeding.
You might consider adding a caption to your video to point this out. :)
+Greg Wolking On the rare occasion I solder a chip in directly I stagger the soldering on opposing pins and also pause mid soldering to let the chip cool down. A socket is always preferred.
+bigclivedotcom
I had figured as much, Clive, as I stated previously. It's quite clear from your videos that you really know your stuff.
Thank you, sir, for taking the time to answer my inquiry. I thoroughly enjoy your videos. In particular, I find the calm, measured, "thinking out loud" style of your narration to be a refreshing change from many other "how-to" RUclipsrs who seem to think they must become some kind of "character" telling jokes, cracking wise, getting ridiculously upset, and so on.
I have often wondered whether you plan what you intend to cover before you start recording or just go completely off-the-cuff every time. If the latter, it _sounds_ like the former, as you're very good at staying on point and not needlessly repeating yourself (AvE comes immediately to mind in that regard). You may count me as a fan, sir, and I applaud your endeavors!
I have a programmable dot matrix display but one vertical row can't do green and another row can't do any colour
Total novice here, I had actually ordered two of these so I could bugger up one of them and perhaps make the second one work. The first one didn't work due to my dodgy soldering and that night I saw this video, so today I attempted my second one and finally managed to produce something that doesn't look like a hedgehog and actually works. I think I might change the power supply widget though as I wanted to be able to plug it into a usb connection and so far it goes into a bread board and then into a USB connection which isn't ideal. Clive just sails through these videos, with double joints and a skill that makes my attempts look like a five year old poking things with a big stick. One day.... ;)
Kits like these are perfect for practising soldering though and are cheap! You could use a micro usb breakout board like this www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Female-MICRO-USB-to-DIP-5-Pin-Breakout-board-UK-STOCK-/252737357565?hash=item3ad85206fd:g:ZRAAAOSwjDZYgx05 for your USB connection!
Big Clive ,do u think a weller 40 watt soldering pen is to much,and what soldering pen do you use,I am sure you got good reason to use that pen with all the work you do.with it. A lot of pens tell you the temps.they run at that weller I am looking at is 900 degrees which seems a lot .my last two soldering pens were 30 watt pens.i have been soldering for over forty years and I been away from it for a while things change.
+Ron Thompson 40 watt seems quite high, except for soldering big connections. Nothing too much has changed in soldering, but try and avoid the lead-free solder.
Dear Big Clive, I have a similar clock to this and wanted to hook it up to a solar panel AND lithium ion phone battery to charge the battery during the day while running the clock, and run the clock from the battery at night etc.. Any tips? I'd imagine it would be simple enough to do?
What's the best way to power this? I tried 2 CR2023's at 6V, and it didn't work. But a USB wall wart and cable at 5V worked perfectly. Anyway to make batteries work?
It's too power hungry for battery use.
+bigclivedotcom lol
At 50 mA, it would drain a CR2023 in about 4 hours even if it would work. If you must have battery, I would suggest AA or C cells, and definitely rechargables because even those wouldn't last longer than a few days. But it would be in the realm of possible, just not very practical.
Mr. CLIVE. Please tell me where to find good soldier. I bought 2 full rolls .8mm 60/40 flux but someone lied. I made the 4 big 7 segment clock like you did but the soulder turns gray. I've soldiered for many years but this new no-lead soldier is crap. Please help.
Built a couple of those clock kits. The one like yours worked till I inadvertently hooked it up to my 12 volt power bank instead of the 5. The other had soldering iron problems. You see, I spend most of my time in a lift recliner because of my body condition, at any rate, I thought it would be a smart idea to buy one of those little cheap USB soldering irons. They do work GREAT for just tinning a lead or something but building a kit? Not so much. Seems they just keep heating up and suddenly the traces and pads are seperating and your kit is pretty much garbage. Ruined four or five different kits with that before it became a little used item. I finally bought a cheap mains type with thermostat on the handle taking the tips like the ones you use. It does a nice job if you are careful but I have yet to buy any more kits. I do have decor that I built up such as little Christmas trees and heart we put on the dash of our Motor Home while traveling and when we spend the winter months in Arizona to keep away from the dreaded snow of North and South Dakota.
lol what the fuck you on about mate.
Who the hell knows, some days I just ramble on, and on and on. I once considered myself a writer, even had a few short stories published, one in a magazine, another in a sci-fi anthology, but I gave it up and turned to computers, then to arduinos, then oh well you get the picture, hell I have been a soldier, a cop, a clerk to a district judge, and a carpenter. I have been a wood worker, a painter and a few other things I shan't go into, but the young in our family remember me the most as that uncle who tells the best ghost stories ever.
lol
I bought three of those recently in order to practice soldering. I already build one but it is not really working. The speaker emits a constant beep and the display is lit up but show no time. I am pretty sure that I followed your video exactly. Is it possible I broke something while soldering or could be a part faulty? Since I don't have a power supply I cut off one plug of an USB cable and power the clock that way. I really like to know what's the problem so I can understand what's going on since I am still a beginner in the field of electronics.
Hi Clive,
After watching this video, I went out and got this kit to solder as my first practice. It was great following along! Is it bad that I am learning to solder "Clive-style" holding the solder and PCB in one hand?
Where do you get your antistatic foam from? I couldn't find on ebay/aliexpress/amazon at reasonable prices.
***** I buy it from a UK based electronic supply company called Rapid Electronics.
Thanks, looks like a good place to get it :)
***** Rapid are a good source for most components, particularly if you order in bulk. And the stuff they sell is full spec.
I bought one of these as im trying to get into electronic projects and teach myself soldering. Amazingly I have it running! I want to power it off of battery and have put three AA batteries together (4.6V) but it's draining them in a matter of hours. I KNOW NOTHING about electronics so wondered if you might know why? (I am assuming it has to do with draw and amps etc) ... also if you have any ideas about what batteries would be required to keep it battery powered if possible that would be great!
+darkunderworld It does draw too much current for battery use. It's really best used with a power supply.
Thanks for the quick and useful response! I bought it to practice soldering so its not the end of the world that it doesn't with a battery because of the current draw... so know I know that current is key to how long a battery will last :) THE MORE YOU KNOW!
Amazing video as always! Just wondering, you've inspired me to start soldering! Just wondering if you can recommend a half decent sdering iron to choose for a beginner, but one I will feel happy soldering with as I get better! Many thanks and keep up the good work!
Justin Parker A good general purpose iron that will serve you well will be an Antex XS. You can probably get one from Maplin, but I'd recommend using lead based solder which Maplin don't seem to sell. If you can get the iron along with a suitable stand that's even better.
Is the microcontroller an Atmega, Attiny, Pic, or picaxe microcontroller???
good we project for £1.79 amazing all the parts plus delivery ..
It's unfortunate but I was sold some quite rare vintage sound chips embedded in what only LOOKED like dissipative foam, Without a proper static shield bag too. Most of the cheap bits I get come incorrectly packaged. If you need to build something you might come to rely upon I'd suggest other sources.
I still love cheap eBay deals though. They keep my hobbies going.
2:45 what are you doing and do you need to do it to make it work
+finro If you're referring to the soldering of the SIL resistor then I just solder one pin initially and then check to see if it is sitting correctly on the PCB before soldering the rest. It's also important to align the dot on one end of the SIL with the marking on the PCB.
So you just made sure it wouldn't come of ?
+finro No. Just making sure it looked well aligned before soldering it in completely. Just so it wasn't at a wonky angle.
Another fun build by Master Clive!
Question asked:
"...why use 2 little caps with the crystal"?
Answer:
You're actually building an oscillator circuit, using a crystal, some capacitors, and the internal circuitry of your microcontroller. If you don't use the caps, your clocking won't work. The values are calculated based on the properties of the crystal, as described in datasheet from Microchip "Crystal Oscillator Basics and Crystal Selection for rfPICTM and PICmicro® Devices"
ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/appnotes/00826a.pdf
Does RUclips really demonetize this as dangerous or whatever they seem to want to decide? I see it as educational, encouraging, and therapeutic.
And, if this is demonetized, we could all benefit from a periodic Mission Impossible theme music! And you could play it from an ‘80’s style 8-bit music generator, sold as a kit on eBay!
They're better now, but in the past technical and scientific channels would get videos demonetised fairly regularly. Usually when non technical people reported them as looking dangerous.