Hasta La Gadget!

Oscilloclock shop owner Aaron’s latest offering is based on a vectorscope, a special kind of oscilloscope used to analyze the quality of television or video signals. Like its brethren, the digital age has reduced the need for vectorscopes, but Aaron can make them useful again as clocks.

Like his other oscilloclocks – one of which we featured last year – the VectorClock uses Aaron’s custom controller board, which draws shapes on the screen by drawing circles, with certain parts of the CRT screen blanked out depending on the desired shape or character. Aaron is proud of this particular build, which is based on a Tektronix 520A vectorscope, because he was able to use nearly all of its exisiting circuits, thus minimizing internal modifications.

As you’ll see in the demo video below, the VectorClock can display the time and date in a variety of ways. It also has dimmable lighting and can even display words.

It looks like something you’ll find at the Darkwaters General Store. Contact Aaron if you want him to build you a VectorClock. He probably doesn’t accept bottle caps as payment.

[via Hack A Day]

Vintage oscilloscopes are amazing devices. It turns out that they make great clocks too. It was around 1960, when Aaron’s grandfather purchased an Heathkit OR-1 oscilloscope, which he passed down in his family in excellent condition. Aaron later used his electronic hacking skills to turn the oscilloscope into a clock.

Turning an oscilloscope into a clock is no easy task. It takes some interesting control circuitry to get its display to show anything other than waveforms. So Aaron created a custom control board that can draw any shape on the CRT screen using just circles. It also squashes circles to draw a line, and cuts the beam entirely to slice a circle in half.

The end result looks spectacular and I bet you want one now. So do I. The good news is that Aaron sells custom-built oscilloscope clocks, as well as circuit boards for you to convert your own scope with. For more information, check out his website, Oscilloclock.com.

[via Hack A Day]