Vintage oscilloscopes are amazing devices. It turns out that they make great clocks too. It was around 1960, when Aaron’s grandfather purchased an Heathkit OR-1 oscilloscope, which he passed down in his family in excellent condition. Aaron later used his electronic hacking skills to turn the oscilloscope into a clock.
Turning an oscilloscope into a clock is no easy task. It takes some interesting control circuitry to get its display to show anything other than waveforms. So Aaron created a custom control board that can draw any shape on the CRT screen using just circles. It also squashes circles to draw a line, and cuts the beam entirely to slice a circle in half.
The end result looks spectacular and I bet you want one now. So do I. The good news is that Aaron sells custom-built oscilloscope clocks, as well as circuit boards for you to convert your own scope with. For more information, check out his website, Oscilloclock.com.
[via Hack A Day]