Category: 7. Clock & Timers

This circuit disables an alarm clock on Saturdays and Sundays when people like to sleep in but enables normal operation on Mondays to Fridays so that people rise in time for work or school. The core of the circuit is a 4017 decade counter which acts as the day counter and it is used in…

This egg timer, which is both simple and functional, shows once again that it is not essential to use a microcontroller for everything these days. The circuit consists of only two ICs from the standard 4000 logic family, a multi-position rotary switch and a few individual components. The combination of a 4040 oscillator/counter and a…

One of the author’s physics projects required an accurate 1-Hz (seconds) clock signal. Unfortunately, precision 10-MHz quartz crystals are expensive, while another problem was found in the inability of most common or garden 40xx CMOS logic chips to work at such a high frequency. However, a typical CMOS counter like the 4017 has such a…

Manufacturers of cordless drills generally recommend a battery charging time of three hours. Once the charging time is up the battery must be disconnected from the charger: if you forget to do this there is a danger of overcharging the battery. This circuit, which sits between the charger circuit and its battery socket, prevents that…

This circuit shows how a 4017 CMOS decade counter can be used to build a timer circuit. Push-button S1 will discharge capacitor C1 through resistor R2. When S1 is released, C1 will charge up through R1 causing a rising edge at the clock input of IC1. This causes the output Q1 to go high (to…