Clock Beat Amplifier Software For Pc
. I have used a program called Windows Timing Machine available at:. Although quite old, it runs okay on my Windows 2000 & XP machines.
If Ben only wants to set the mechanism in beat, the free version will work just fine. However it is rather crude in how it distinguishes the ticks, I had to fiddle with recording volumes and trigger levels for quite some time. I found I could measure the beat far more accurately by just recording the sound directly into a sound editor, and then reading off the tick times and putting them into a spreadsheet and then averaging the intervals. This was able to show me the escapement wheel was off-centre on my regulator.
Geoff Frank, Bury. With reference to a program to regulate a pendulum clock, I cannot help on that score, but I can offer some help on the actual regulation. When you are regulating a clock, there is always the question ' How far do I have to turn the nut?' There is a formula, which allows you to answer this question. If L is the length of the pendulum and N the threads per unit length of the rating nut, then one complete rotation of the nut will change the rate of the clock by 720/(N.L) seconds per day. This can be re-arranged to give degrees of rotation of the nut for a change of one second per day as N.L/120 degrees.
L and N must be in the same units. If L is in inches then N must be in threads per inch, if L is in centimetres then N is in threads per centimetre.
Boardman, via e-mail. Possibly the best timing machine of any kind available on the market is the 'Microset' timing machine by Brian Mumford. This is a hardware device, which then carries out further analysis on a PC or Apple:.
John Newgas, via e-mail. There is a freeware software oscilloscope, which can be downloaded from the following website:. It is designed for use with a microphone and should meet the requirement admirably. I have used it, or one like it, to calibrate a rev counter on a diesel engine from engine noise. In some applications it can make life easier, if you store the source noise on a tape recorder and plug its output into the soundcard.
David McMullen, via e-mail. Whenever I sit down at the computer my cat insists on jumping on the table and plonking herself down in front of me, resting her backside on the keyboard, with predictable results.
Has anyone any advice or suggestions for a humane deterrent, perhaps something that smells bad to cats (but not to humans, or damaging to computer keyboards) that will keep her away? Violet Keys, via e-mail. Wipe the keyboard with citronella. Cats hate the smell. Jill Harris, via e-mail. I find a peppermint, preferably of the Sharps Extra Strong variety, on top of the monitor encourages the cat to move up in the world where it is also a little warmer and more comfortable than the keyboard.
Patrick Methold, Cowes, Isle of Wight. One sure way of preventing Violet's cat from sitting on her computer keyboard would be to place a bottle of vet's pills beside it. Peter Michel, via e-mail. I suspect that Violet already has everything necessary to keep her cats from sitting on her keyboard, namely a door.
To be more specific, a closed door, with the cats on the other side. Chris Winpenny, via e-mail. My sister had a similar problem with her pups. She found a device called a 'Pet Deterrent', which is available from Maplin Electronics, costing £7.99.
It is shaped like a large paw; built-in sensors detect movement and emit a 3 second high pitch pulse to warn off the animal. Keith Harvey, via e-mail.
Presumably the cat was after your mouse! I suggest giving the mouse to your cat and buying a trackball. Alternatively reconfigure the asterisk, exclamation or question mark keystrokes to the sound of a Rottwieler barking, so that you can warn off the cat as it approaches.
I think that what Violet Keys needs Pawsense. It detects cats walking across the keyboard, and locks the computer up. At the same time, it makes a 'sound that annoys cats', which should teach them better ways. When last I looked at the site a year or so ago, it promised a Mac version but it hasn't materialised, anyway, cats don't go near Macs because they feel so frumpy in comparison. Jim Delaney, Bethnal Green.
Might I suggest a cat collar, a table leg, and a suitable length of string with the ends tied to each item? Aked (Dog lover), via e-mail P.S.
The cat should be wearing the collar!. My cat also sits on my desk while I'm working. Fortunately he avoids the keyboard, but likes to sleep under the little spotlight I've fixed to the side of my PC - I he's attracted by the warmth from the bulb. Peter Simon, via e-mail. Get a Chihuahua. They're compact enough to be able to sit on your lap without interfering with the keyboard and they'll keep cats at bay. Gill Dexter, via e-mail.
She could buy an extra keyboard at a boot sale and place it near her PC and give that to her cat. The Needs of Kitty always come first, it's the law! Diamond, Littleton, Winchester. Feed the cat somewhere else just before you want to use the computer. Shut the cat out of the room. Site a small (noisy) fan to blow over the keyboard.
A clear rigid slippery keyboard cover should also help. I use 5mm Perspex. Keep it clean and in place. The cat will be reluctant to step on it and will gradually lose the habit, whether or not you are typing. David Kent, via e-mail. As a gamekeeper I have the ideal solution to Violet Keys' problem of her cat jumping onto her keyboard. It's called a shotgun and quite humane if applied correctly - more humane in fact than what cats do to our birds.
Allan N Chivers, N Wales. To avoid problems from spammers we do not publish respondents e-mail addresses but we do forward the replies we receive to the questioner.
Anyone wishing to get in touch with a respondent is welcome to e-mail or write in and we will pass on your details. Can you help?. I have recently retired though ill health and now occupy much of my time making various items on my Scroll Saw.
It would like to create my own profiles/images from photographs etc. And wondered if anyone knows of any software that might be suitable to this purpose? Alan Martin Huntingdon. Is it possible to get hold of a straight-path laser printer or powder copier, which will take heavyweight stock (anything over 300 gsm)? The object is to print in foil over the impression, with the foil adhering to the laser print or toner.
Invitations and cards will not pass through a conventional wrap-round printer or photocopier. The major manufacturers cannot offer anything unless I go up to a £6k+ professional digital printing press. I feel sure that someone, somewhere, makes a suitable printer? Kissack, via e-mail.
If you have a solution, or a problem for Over 2 You send it to or write to: Over 2 You, Connected, The Daily Telegraph City Office, Salters Hall, 4, Fore Street, London EC2Y 5DT.
Cheap Timing Machine Creating a 'Cheap' timing machine Having gotten into Amateur watch repair I realized that to have any hope of regulating a watch I would need some sort of timing machine. I did look at the Microset - and may yet buy one as it seems like a lot of bang for your buck. I also tried the 'Windows Timing Machine' but found that it's 'sample and analyze' methodolgy weak at best, and was not able to get useful results.
So, until to make due until I feel like spending the money for a Microset I fabricated my own timing machine. The first thing you need is a sensor. Ordinary microphones don't work well at all. They are carefully designed to pickup sound from the air, and not from contact.
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Also there is a great range of audio frequencies that are simply noise as far as the task of listening to a watch tick I fabricated my own sensor from a piezo-electric disk salvaged from a Radio Shack Tweeter, and have written up the details You then need a way to view the signal. I did a web search and turned up a large number of 'Sound Card Oscilloscope' programs out there. I tried several on their free trial basis and in the end decided that Virtins program was the best for this purpose: however many of the others would work as well, the key being you need a good magnified sweep capability. A real Oscilloscope would also work just dandy if you have access to one. The other essential is an accurate and finely tuneable frequency reference. For this purpose I again searched the web for sound-card based signal generators.
Virtins has one as part of their offerings, but it is NOT usable for this purpose as it's tuning is not exact at all. I ended up using a program called 'SignalGen', the free version is entirely adequate for this use. The basic technique is to observe the the waveform from the sensor on the oscilloscope while it is triggered by our stable clock source at one half beat rate of the watch (eg 2.5 Hz for your normal 18,000 bph watch). In order to get this to work I set the signal generator program to a 2.5Hz square wave out put and set the 'balance' slider all the way to the left. I then set the 'Record source' on my sound card to 'What you Hear' which means that the recorder input used by the Oscilloscope program will be a mix of the sound from the Microphone and the squarewave from the generator.
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Unfortunately my particular sound card won't allow you to pan the Microphone signal all the way to the right so that you can have just the microphone as one input to the oscilloscope and just the signal generator as the other. However, since the signal from the generator is much larger than that from the microphone you can use it as a trigger source just fine even with the watch ticks mixed in. Depending on the capabilites of your soundcard you may be able to do this or you may need to loop the line out of your soundcard back to the line in. Right is the typical setup on the signal generator program. Notice the relatively tight limits placed on the frequency slider. This makes it easy to fine tune the generator's frequency until it matches the watch under test.
Below is a screen capture from the oscilloscope program, showing the typicial triple tick that makes up a watch tick. The scope is set to a 200 ms sweep (which is the full duration of the capture) and then the magnifier is set to 5x giving us 4 msec/divison. In real use I often set the magnifier quite a bit higher. You want to start out with the magnifier at 1x just so you can see the ticks and make sure you've got the signal generator set close to the correct frequency. If the beat of the watch exactly matches the signal generator then the pattern will remain stationary, but if it is off then it will slowly drift to the right or to the left.
The more you increase the magnification the smaller the drift you can detect by eye. If the tick pattern is drifting to the left it means that the watch is a little slower than the reference. Measuring Beat Error There is two ways to do this. Both require that you first get the rate close to right, either by regulating the watch, or by fine tuning the signal generator until the tick pattern is stationary.
Then you can switch the trigger polarity from 'Up' to 'Dn', and observing how far the tick moves on the scope screen. You can also do this with the '180 Degree phase shift' button on the signal generator. The other way is to set your signal generator to the actual beat rate of the watch.
If you do this you you get a display that alternates between the tick and the tock. You may need to adjust the basic sweep rate however to get the alternation to actually happen. Calibration While the crystal oscillators used in sound card are reasonably accurate you can get more accurate results by calibrating your sound card. If you are in North America and have a short-wave radio you can use the time-tick signals broadcast by WWV. However the most commonly available accurate frequency reference is your TV set.
What I did was to feed the Video out from my TV receiver into one of the Line In, inputs on my computer sound card. Even at 192 kHz sample rate video pretty much looks like noise, but the vertical sync pulse is pretty easy to pick out. If fact even if your sound card is limited to 41.1 kHz sampling you can see the vertical sync if you know what ot look for.
The technique is exactly the same as for checking a watch, just the rates are now much higher.The signal generator is tuned to 59.94006 Hz, the scope set on a 20 mSec sweep, and the magnifier set at 20x. As before fine tune the signal generator until the sync pulse remains stationary. (You Europeans have it simpler, both PAL and SECAM use 50.000 Hz as their vertical rate). On my machine the answer was 59.94217 Hz, and error that corresponds to about 3 Sec/day. Dividing the measured rate by the known reference rate gives us a correction factor. This can then be multiplied by any desired frequency to get the number to plug into our signal generator.
To make this process easy here's a spreadsheet that does the calculations Epilog Since writing this two things have happened. First of all Television has gone digital, so my suggestion of using video out from your TV set as a frequency reference in the 'Calibration' section is no longer apropos. TV signals are stil based on very accurate time bases, but getting a usable signal from a digital broadcast signal is a project beyond the scope of this web site. Second, for several reasons, I have replaced my home-brewed rig with a TYMC MTG-1000 unit.
The unit serves my needs well, it is the least expensive unit that will measure amplitude. The unit has two drawbacks: First it only accepts the more common beat rates: 18,000, 19,800, 21,600, 25,200, 28,800, and 36,000 BPH. Second it's 'Beat amplifier' option is a generated click and not an amplified of the actual watch sound. Making of very limted use.