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2025 One Hertz Challenge: The Easy Way to Make a Nixie Tube Clock
Let’s say you want to build a Nixie clock. You could go out and find some tubes, source a good power supply design, start whipping up a PCB, and working on a custom enclosure. Or, you could skip all...
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2025 One Hertz Challenge: 4-Function Frequency Counter
Frequency! It’s an important thing to measure, which is why [Jacques Pelletier] built a frequency counter some time ago. The four-function unit is humble, capable, and also an entry into our 2025 One...
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2025 One-Hertz Challenge: ZX Spectrum Is Now A Z80 Frequency Counter
The ZX Spectrum is perhaps most fondly remembered as a home computer and a games machine. [Tito] has grabbed the faithful black plastic box and turned it into a frequency counter as an innovative entry...
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Korean Multifunction Counter Teardown
[Thomas Scherrer] likes to tear down old test equipment, and often, we remember the devices he opens up or — at least — we’ve heard of them. However, this time, he’s got a Hung Chang HC-F100...
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Upgrade Puts a Lot of Zeroes on Kit-Built Frequency Counter
If there’s anything more viscerally pleasing than seeing an eight-digit instrument showing a measurement with all zeroes after the decimal point, we’re not sure what it could. Maybe rolling the...
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Simple STM32 Frequency Meter Handles Up To 30MHz With Ease
[mircemk] had previously built a frequency counter using an Arduino, with a useful range up to 6 MHz. Now, they’ve implemented a new design on a far more powerful STM32 chip that boosts the measurement...
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Vintage Digital Frequency Meter Teardown
You think of digital displays as modern, but the idea isn’t that new. We had clocks, for example, with wheels and flip digits for years. The Racal frequency counter that [Thomas Scherrer] is playing...
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Do Not Attempt Disassembly: Analog Wizardry In A 1960s Counter
[CuriousMarc] is back with more vintage HP hardware repair. This time it’s the HP 5245L, a digital nixie-display frequency counter from 1963. This unit is old enough to be entirely made of discrete...
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To Turn an ATtiny817 into a 150MHz Counter, First Throw Out the Spec Sheet
One generally reads a data sheet in one of two ways. The first is to take every spec at face value, figuring that the engineers have taken everything into account and presented each number as the...
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Clock Testing Sans Oscilloscope?
Like many people who repair stuff, [Learn Electronics Repair] has an oscilloscope. But after using it to test a motherboard crystal oscillator, he started thinking about how people who don’t own a...
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Edge-Mounted Meters Give This Retro Frequency Counter Six Decades of Display
With regard to retro test gear, one’s thoughts tend to those Nixie-adorned instruments of yore, or the boat-anchor oscilloscopes that came with their own carts simply because there was no other way to...
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NTP, Rust, and Arduino Make a Phenomenal Frequency Counter
Making a microcontroller perform as a frequency counter is a relatively straightforward task involving the measurement of the time period during which a number of pulses are counted. The maximum...
View ArticleEasy Frequency Counter Looks Good, Reads To 6.5 MHz
We were struck by how attractive [mircemk’s] Arduino-based frequency counter looks. It also is a reasonably simple build. It can count up to 6.5 MHz which isn’t that much, but there’s a lot you can do...
View ArticleRadio Shack Shortwave Goes Digital
If you spent the 1970s obsessively browsing through the Radio Shack catalog, you probably remember the DX-160 shortwave receiver. You might have even had one. The radio looked suspiciously like the...
View ArticleHackaday Podcast 036: Camera Rig Makes CNC Jealous, Become Your Own Time...
Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys work their way through a fantastic week of hacks. From a rideable tank tread to spoofing radio time servers and from tune-playing vacuum cleaners to an...
View ArticleFrequency Counting a Different Way
Counting frequency is one of those tasks that seems simple on the face of it, but actually has quite a bit of nuance. There are two obvious methods, of which the first is to count zero crossings for...
View ArticleImproving A Cheap Frequency Counter With GPS
Frequency counters are useful tools for anyone that finds themselves regularly working with time-variant signals. There are a huge range available, from cheap eBay specials to expensive lab-grade...
View ArticleHacking A Cheap eBay Frequency Counter
eBay is a wondrous land, full of Star Wars memorabilia in poor condition, old game consoles at insane markups, and a surprising amount of DIY electronics. [TheHWCave] found himself tinkering with a...
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Building A Pocket Sized Arduino Oscilloscope
There’s little question that an oscilloscope is pretty much a must-have piece of equipment for the electronics hacker. It’s a critical piece of gear for reverse engineering devices and protocols, and...
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Characterizing A Cheap 500MHz Counter Module
An exciting development over the last few years has been the arrival of extremely cheap instrumentation modules easily bought online and usually shipped from China. Some of them have extremely...
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