THEORY

In this Theory, you're going to learn exactly how a digital clock (or wristwatch) works. In fact,
you're even going to learn how to build your own!

To understand how a digital clock works, you have to get inside and see what's going on. So let's
get started!

 A source of power to run the clock

In a pendulum clock, the weights or the springs handle this role.
 An accurate timebase that acts as the clock's heartbeat
In a pendulum clock, the pendulum and escapement handle this role.
 A way to gear down the timebase to extract different components of time (hours,
minutes, seconds)
In a pendulum clock, gears serve this role.
 A way to display the time
In a pendulum clock, the hands and face serve this role.

A digital clock is no different. It simply handles these functions electronically rather than
mechanically. So in a digital clock, there is an electrical power supply (either a battery or 120-
volt AC power from the wall). There is an electronic timebase that "ticks" at some known and
accurate rate. There is an electronic "gearing mechanism" of some sort -- generally a digital
clock handles gearing with a component called a "counter." And there is a display, usually either
LEDs (light emitting diodes)

High-Level View

Here is a quick overview of the components of a digital clock at a high level.

At the heart of the clock there is a piece that can generate an accurate 60-hertz (Hz, oscillations
per second) signal. There are two ways to generate this signal:

1. The signal can be extracted from the 60-Hz oscillations in a normal power line. Many
clocks that get their power from a wall socket use this technique because it is cheap and
easy. The 60-Hz signal on the power line is reasonably accurate for this purpose.
2. The signal can be generated using a crystal oscillator. Obviously, any battery-operated
clock or wristwatch will use this technique instead. It takes more parts, but is generally
much more accurate.

The 60-Hz signal is divided down using a counter. When building your own clock, a typical
TTL part to use is a 7490 decade counter. This part can be configured to divide by any number
between 2 and 10, and generates a binary number as output. So you take your 60-Hz time base,
divide it by 10, divide it by 6 and now you have a 1-Hz (1 oscillation per second) signal. This 1-
Hz signal is perfect for driving the "second hand" portion of the display. So far, the clock looks
like this in a block diagram:

To actually see the seconds, then the output of the counters needs to drive a display. The two
counters produce binary numbers. The divide-by-10 counter is producing a 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9
sequence on its outputs, while the divide-by-6 counter is producing a 0-1-2-3-4-5 sequence on its
outputs. We want to display these binary numbers on something called a 7-segment display. A
7-segment display has seven bars on it, and by turning on different bars you can display different
numbers:

To convert a binary number between 0 and 9 to the appropriate signals to drive a 7-segment
display, you use a (appropriately named) "binary number to 7-segment display converter." This
chip looks at the binary number coming in and turns on the appropriate bars in the 7-segment
LED to display that number. If we are displaying the seconds, then the seconds part of our clock
looks like this:
The output from this stage oscillates at a frequency of one-cycle-per-minute. You can imagine
that the minutes section of the clock looks exactly the same. Finally, the hours section looks
almost the same except that the divide-by-6 counter is replaced by a divide-by-2 counter.

Now there are two details left to figure out if you are building a real clock:

 The clock as designed here does not understand that at 12:59:59 it is supposed to cycle
back to 1:00. That is a messy little problem, and there are a couple of ways to solve it.
One technique involves creating a little bit of logic that can detect the number 13 and
reset the hour section back to 1 (not zero). Another technique involves using an adder.
For our purposes, it is easier to deal in military time, because military time includes a
zero hour.
 We need a way to set the clock. Typically this is handled by gating higher-than-normal
frequencies into the minutes section. For example, most clocks have "fast" and "slow" set
buttons. When you press the "fast" button, the 60-Hz signal is driven straight into the
minutes counter. When you press the "slow" button, a 1-Hz signal is driven into the
minutes section. There are other possible techniques, but this one is the most common.

Now let's see what we have to do to build a real clock!

Building Your Own Digital Clock

The best way to understand the different components of a digital clock and how they work
together is to actually walk through the steps of building your own clock. Here we will build just
the "seconds" part of the clock, but you can easily extend things to build a complete clock with
hours, minutes and seconds. To understand these steps, you will need to have read How Boolean
Logic Works and How Electronic Gates Work. In particular, the electronic gates article
introduces you to TTL chips, breadboards and power supplies. If you have already played around
with gates as described in that article, then the description here will make a lot more sense.

The first thing we need is a power supply. We built one in the electronic gates article. That time,
we used a standard wall transformer that produced DC (direct current) power and then regulated
it to 5 volts using a 7805. For our clock, we want to do things slightly differently because we are
going to extract our 60-Hz timebase from the power line. That means that we want an AC rather
than a DC transformer, and we will use a part called a bridge rectifier to convert the AC to DC.
Therefore, we need the following parts for our power supply:

A few notes on the parts used: The difference between the AC transformer we are using here
and the DC transformer we used in the article on gates is that the AC transformer preserves the
60-Hz sine wave found in 120-volt household current. If you want to use your volt-ohm meter to
measure the voltage of an AC transformer, be sure you use an AC voltage range rather than a DC
range.

 We use the bridge rectifier to convert the AC to DC. One of the terminals on the
rectifier will be marked with a "+" -- from that you can find the minus and AC inputs.
 There is no polarity to an AC transformer, so it does not matter which transformer lead
you connect to which AC lead of the rectifier.
 The 7805 and capacitors are wired just like they were in the electronic gates article.
 The resistor and the zener diode extract a 60-Hz signal from the transformer's sine
wave. A diode is a one-way valve for electrons. A zener diode is also a one-way valve,
but it also passes electrons in the other direction if they are above a certain voltage. The
zener diode therefore turns a 10-volt sine wave into a clipped wave oscillating between 0
and 5 volts. This is perfect for clocking the TTL counters. The 1-K-ohm resistor makes
sure that the current to the zener diode is limited so we do not burn out the diode. The
diode will have a band painted on one end -- this band should be the end connected to the
resistor.

Circuit Diagram

Here's a circuit diagram for the power supply and time base:

As we saw in the article on electronic gates, the power supply is the most difficult part!

To create the rest of the clock you will need:

 At least four 7490 or 74LS90 chips

 At least two 7447 or 74LS47 binary-to-7-segment converters
 At least 20 resistors for the LEDs in the 7-segment displays (330 ohms would be fine.)
 Some normal LEDs
 At least two common-anode (CA) 7-segment LED displays (Jameco part # 17208 is
typical.)
 Breadboards, wire, etc. (See this page for a complete list.)

The number of chips, resistors and LEDs you need depends on how many digits you are
interested in implementing. Here we will discuss only seconds, so the "at least" numbers are
correct.

7490 Pinout

Let's look at the 7490 briefly to see how it works. Here is the pinout:
The 7490 is a decade counter, meaning it is able to count from 0 to 9 cyclically, and that is its
natural mode. That is, QA, QB, QC and QD are 4 bits in a binary number, and these pins cycle
through 0 to 9, like this:

QD QC QB QA
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1
0 0 1 0
0 0 1 1
0 1 0 0
0 1 0 1
0 1 1 0
0 1 1 1
1 0 0 0
1 0 0 1

You can also set the chip up to count up to other maximum numbers and then return to zero. You
"set it up" by changing the wiring of the R01, R02, R91 and R92 lines. If both R01 and R02 are 1
(5 volts) and either R91 or R92 are 0 (ground), then the chip will reset QA, QB, QC and QD to 0.
If both R91 and R92 are 1 (5 volts), then the count on QA, QB, QC and QD goes to 1001 (5). So:

 To create a divide-by-10 counter, you first connect pin 5 to +5 volts and pin 10 to
ground to power the chip. Then you connect pin 12 to pin 1 and ground pins 2, 3, 6, and
7. You run the input clock signal (from the timebase or a previous counter) in on pin 14.
The output appears on QA, QB, QC and QD. Use the output on pin 11 to connect to the
next stage.
 To create a divide-by-6 counter, you first connect pin 5 to +5 volts and pin 10 to ground
to power the chip. Then you connect pin 12 to pin 1 and ground pins 6 and 7. Connect pin
2 to pin 9 and pin 3 to pin 8. Run the input clock signal (from the timebase or a previous
counter) in on pin 14. The output appears on QA, QB and QC. Use pin 8 to connect to the
next stage.

Creating the Second Hand

Knowing all of this, you can easily create the "second hand" of a digital clock. It looks like this:
In this diagram, the top two 7490s divide the 60-Hz signal from the power supply down by a
factor of 60. The third 7490 takes a 1-hertz signal as input and divides it by 10. Its four outputs
drive normal LEDs in this diagram. The fourth 7490 divides the output of the third by 6, and its
three outputs drive normal LEDs as well. What you have at this point is a "second hand" for your
clock, with the output of the second hand appearing in binary. If you would like to create a clock
that displays the time in binary, then you are set! Here is a view of a breadboard containing a
divide-by-10 counter, a divide-by-6 counter and a set of LEDs to display the output of the
counters in binary:

The wires entering the picture from the left are power, ground and
clock lines for the board. The left counter is a 7490 set up to divide
by 10, and the right one is another 7490 set up to divide by 6.
If you pack things tighter and do a neater wiring job, you can fit up to four counters on a single
breadboard.

Displaying the Time as Numerals

If you want to display the time as numerals, you need to use the 7447s. Here is the pinout of a
7447, as well as the segment labeling for a 7-segment LED:

You connect a 7447 to a 7490 like this:

 Provide +5 volts on pin 16 and ground on pin 8 to power the 7447 chip.
 Connect QA, QB, QC and QD from a 7490 to pins 7, 1, 2 and 6 of the 7447, respectively.
 Connect 330-ohm resistors to pins 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 15 and 14 of the 7447, and connect
those resistors to the a, b, c, d, e, f, and g segments of the 7-segment LED.
 Connect the common anode of the 7-segment LED to +5 volts.