Joined: Sat May 28 2011, 02:48PM
Location: Yurop
Posts: 9
Hi friends,
For my '71 Newport I was looking for a clock. It was a lot car from Florida originally, and had no options except for AC. So I wanted a clock that would work and keep time accurately. This almost immediately excluded the original clocks. I bought defective one though, for the original look And disassembled it. I replaced the clock mechanism with a DCF radio controlled unit. This works on a Atomic clock in Germany that broadcasts it's time over a 77 kHz radio signal throughout Europe. It always keeps perfect time and goes automatically to daylight savings time and back. This is what it looks like in the dashboard: The knob doesn't do anything anymore. Happy driving! Arnold.
I am going to replase the clock kuz it duznt keep time at all. The thermometerz gotta go az well kuz they eat a set uv batteryz in a month. I will try to find a radio clock with a thermometer.
It looks to be almost identical. One interesting thing that they note on their webpage:
In order to ensure that your radio controlled clock motor receives the best signal strength, we do not recommend using this movement with a metal clock face.
I know my factory clock has a metal face. From the picture that you posted Arnoldsat, looks like yours does too. Hope it doesn't cause problems for you.
Joined: Tue Oct 11 2005, 01:33AM
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Posts: 5893
Super cool idea, "but" being enclosed within a steel box, firewall/dash cover/clock face and steel floor makes it tough to "see" the radio signals to sync the clock. For the $9 price maybe buy a couple and see if the electronics and/or antenna can be separated from the drive motor. That way maybe the antenna can be mounted in a less shielded spot.
Hooking it to the car's power system is probably a bad idea because of all the electrical noise from ignition and the alternator. Might be able to do it if you use a rechargeable battery and you trickle charge it. In that way the battery acts as a fairly efficient noise filter.
Joined: Sat Aug 19 2006, 05:03PM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 2919
Fury440 wrote ...
Hooking it to the car's power system is probably a bad idea because of all the electrical noise from ignition and the alternator. Might be able to do it if you use a rechargeable battery and you trickle charge it. In that way the battery acts as a fairly efficient noise filter.
IMO that's like saying our car's radio should be on a separate battery because of EMI. A step-down regulator circuit down to 1.5V with adequate noise filtering would be fine. I would use an LM317 linear voltage regulator IC. I'd put a Pi-filter on the front end for some extra EMI protection.
At one time I did my own car clock quartz crystal movement conversion with a clock module bought from the craft store. It also used an AA battery. I just hacked in a zener diode as a crude voltage regulator, which worked fine in that application. Quartz crystals output a very stable frequency regardless of input voltage. For this application, your biggest concern is a noise-free power supply for the radio receiver. However, it's likely that the module uses a buck converter internally to step-up the voltage since it's unlikely that the electronics inside actually work on 1.5V. Then internal filtering in the module would eliminate noise from the buck converter, and likely any remaining EMI from the car's electrical system.