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Crystal Controlled 1Hz Time Base

The document describes a circuit to generate an accurate 1Hz time base signal using a crystal oscillator and frequency divider chips. A 32.768 kHz crystal is divided by 215 using a CD4060 frequency divider chip to generate 2Hz, and then a CD4027 flip-flop provides an additional divide-by-two stage to output a precise 1Hz signal. The simple circuit provides a low-cost solution for applications requiring an accurate 1Hz clock while avoiding the limitations of alternatives like timers or power line extraction.

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Dwi Wijanarko
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233 views3 pages

Crystal Controlled 1Hz Time Base

The document describes a circuit to generate an accurate 1Hz time base signal using a crystal oscillator and frequency divider chips. A 32.768 kHz crystal is divided by 215 using a CD4060 frequency divider chip to generate 2Hz, and then a CD4027 flip-flop provides an additional divide-by-two stage to output a precise 1Hz signal. The simple circuit provides a low-cost solution for applications requiring an accurate 1Hz clock while avoiding the limitations of alternatives like timers or power line extraction.

Uploaded by

Dwi Wijanarko
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Crystal Controlled 1Hz Time Base ( Clock )

A 1Hz time-base clock with the accuracy of crystal control.

Synopsis : It's simple to add a crystal controlled 1Hz time-base to your timer, clock, stopwatch, or other
time based projects. (Sept 9, 2010)

There are many projects that require an accurate 1Hz clock signal, most involving the measurement of
time, or controlling something based on time. There are timers, time clocks, nixie and other real time
clocks, and many others. In my case, I wanted to build a very simple frequency counter. That circuit, in
essence, simply counts how many pulses happen within 1 second. To make the counter as accurate as
possible I needed my 1 second counting period to be as accurate as possible.

There are many ways to generate a 1Hz signal. Probably the most common is to use an NE555 timer
circuit set up for 1Hz, but there are problems with that approach. The resistors and capacitors use to set
the frequency are not all that accurate, and they drift with temperature. Actually the 555 Chip itself can
drift with temperature.

Another tactic is to extract the 60Hz signal from the AC power line and divide it down to 1Hz. Aside from
the hazards of working with high voltage AC, this ties you and your project to a wall socket. My project,
as well as many many others, need to be portable and battery operated so this won't do.

A far less common approach is to use a GPS receiver. Most GPS modules actually have a 1Hz output
derived from the signal received from the satellites so using it is simple. What's more the 1Hz signal is
insanely accurate, being based on atomic clocks run by the government. The down side is that this is a
fairly expensive approach. What's more, it depends on having its antenna positioned so that it can get a
usable signal from the satellites.

Since just about every wrist watch and cheap wall clock obviously has a very accurate time base, we
should be able to take their approach to get our signal, and that's just what we're going to do.

In principal this circuit is extremely simple. You build a crystal STAGE ACTION FREQUENCY
oscillator, and then you divide its output down to 1Hz. The
crystal we're going to use here run at 32.768 KHz ( 32768 Hz ). 0 Crystal out 32768 Hz
These are commonly called clock, or watch crystals. The
1 Divide by 2 16384 Hz
significance of the value is that you can successively divide
32768 by 2 and eventually you will get to 1. There are other 2 Divide by 2 8192 Hz
values that will do this (all multiples of 32768), but this value is
very common. That means the crystal is cheap and easy to 3 Divide by 2 4096 Hz
find. 4 Divide by 2 2048 Hz

Now we need to divide it down. From the table to the right you 5 Divide by 2 1024 Hz
can see that we need 15 stages of divide-by-two to get our
6 Divide by 2 512 Hz
32.768KHz down to 1Hz. Since divide-by-two is actually a flip-
flop, and flip-flops come two to a chip, that means that we'll 7 Divide by 2 256 Hz
need 8 flip-flop chips to do all the division (leaving one left over
flip-flop). 8 chips means that our circuit will take up a lot of 8 Divide by 2 128 Hz
space, and waste a whole lot of power. Luckily there is an 9 Divide by 2 64 Hz
easier way.

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10 Divide by 2 32 Hz
There is a class of CMOS ICs called Frequency Dividers. In
essence, they are a long string of flip-flops in a single package. 11 Divide by 2 16 Hz
This greatly reduces board space and power consumption. The
12 Divide by 2 8 Hz
specific divider chip we're going to use here is the CD4060. This
is a 14-stage divider however only 10 of the divider stages are 13 Divide by 2 4 Hz
brought out to pin on the chip. One of the benefits of this chip
is that it contains the circuitry needed to drive the crystal 14 Divide by 2 2 Hz
directly. All we'll need to do is add a couple of capacitors and 15 Divide by 2 1 Hz
resistors to make it run.

You can get the data sheet for the CD4060 in the PDF file for this project, or download it from here.

About the only drawback to the CD4060 is that fact that its final output is not the 1Hz that we're looking
for, its actually 2Hz. That means that we'll have to add one more stage of division to the chain to get our
1Hz output.

That's actually pretty easy, we'll just add one of the flip-flop chips we were talking about above.
Specifically, a CD4027 CMOS Dual J-K Master-Slave Flip-Flop. Since we only need one more stage of
division we're left with a spare flip-flop, which is a bonus. A 1Hz clock signal is HIGH for a half of a
second, and LOW for a half of a second. For many timing applications, like my frequency counter, you
actually need a signal that is HIGH for a whole second (so you can count pulses for exactly one second).
So simply take the 1Hz signal and feed it into the spare flip-flop. The output of that flip-flop will be
0.5Hz, or HIGH for one second, and LOW for one second.

You can get the data sheet for the CD4027 in the PDF file for this project, or download it from here.

So, let's get to the final circuit...

Designator Component
U1 CD4060 FREQUENCY DIVIDER
U2 CD4027 DUAL FLIP-FLOP
R1 330K Ohm Resistor
R2, 3 6.8 Meg Ohm Resistor
C1, 2 33pF Capacitor
Y1 32.768 KHz Crystal

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1Hz Time base Schematic

1Hz Time Base Layout, Standard Radio Shack style protoboard.

1Hz Time Base Layout, Gadget Gangster style protoboard.

3 Error! No text of specified style in document. | [Type the company name]

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