Fixing the Portobello Police Station Clock
pointinthecloud.com
pointinthecloud.com
Without modifying anything intrusive to the mechanism, a cheap way of monitoring to make sure it's still running OK would be to install a low cost PoE IP camera mounted in such a way that it's aimed at the gear mechanism, then feed its video into something like Frigate. As cheap as $75 for a camera, some cat5e cable and staples to take the cable to where you need it, and an old desktop PC (plug it into anything that gives it a DHCP lease and default route outbound, make it a VPN client). You could also possibly use the camera to monitor the blinking status LED without doing anything intrusive to the existing electronics.
One other random thought: The battery in that photo looks like exactly the same size commonly used in emergency exit stairwell wall mounted battery-backed lighting systems, it's a 12V 7Ah to 8Ah AGM lead acid, rectangular/flat size. It should be fairly easy to find a replacement if needed from a local distributor of commercial electrician supplies/parts. Those things should go on a fairly frequent replacement schedule since they're held at 100% state of charge near constantly, and that one is probably exposed to hot summer sunlight temperatures in June/July/August. As a general rule if you don't know how old it is or have any records of when it was last replaced, it's time to replace it.
You can also just look at the clock from outside to see if it's got the correct time.
This came to mind because I recently had reason to set up automated sump pump monitoring for a rental property which doesn't have a proper basement, just a crawl space.
We had the choice of just installing a binary state (wet or not wet) zigbee liquid sensor, which we did, talking to a cheap USB dongle and home assistant, just above the height of the sump pump. But in addition to that I put a $60 camera which has a medium-wide overview of the whole crawl space, generally centered on the sump pit so that it can be checked in the event the liquid alarm goes off.
Stapled some cat5e across the floor joists that comes up through a small hole in the utility room where the PoE switch is. Theoretically it should also serve to check for things like "are raccoons inhabiting the crawl space?" or a few other possibilities.
- You want to know this before water is on the floor.
- Sump pits tend to be splashy in heavy water flow.
- The float switch will correctly return to "it's fine" status when the problem is no longer occurring.
Liquid sensors are great for "my basement is flooding", float switches are great for "I need to fix my pumps before my basement floods.
Rather, it's a 6V 1.2Ah:
For extra fun times, baby wipes / wet wipes get flagged as explosives in the US when they use the sniffer devices.
Shortly after 9/11 I was flying out of Hawaii back to the mainland and I watched the screen when they swabbed my bag. It reported as positive for every single type of explosive (to the best of my knowledge, I was not carrying anything even remotely explosive). The tech looked at the results, said "that can't possibly be right" and waved me on.
Had a number of experiences where their identity scanners (for some destinations they scan you at the start of security and just before the gate to ensure you get on the right aircraft) failed to be operational resulting in delays that ultimately may have forced me to miss my flight and stay in the UK. On the other hand, arriving from Ireland to the UK results in no checks because of the common travel area — you get waved through a special gate which is reserved for passengers from Ireland. LOL
The bag goes right next to the shooting bench at the firing line. It presumably gets a decent amount of powder residue on it, and yet it's been swabbed several times and not set off anything. My buddy is scrupulously careful to remove anything non-airport-approved before taking it on a trip, so the fact that something "bad" was previously contained in the bag has been double/triple checked to be absent before they show up to the airport.
I was at a range shooting this old revolver with worn seals. Every shot, unburnt (or sometimes burning) powder was flying backward onto my face and arms. I basically took a gunpowder shower.
Got up like 6 hours later and went to the airport to get on a plane. Got swabbed. Came back negative. Got on the plane.
So... yeah, not really sure what the swabs are doing. I have to assume it's more an issue of "they're not intending to detect that" than "failures to detect" because otherwise the repeated misses here are just a little too big to believe.
If you've been around mercury vapor, you'll set off alarms at the airport. Old church attics are often quite heavy metal.
Also, airports in places with free/open gun culture tend to have their weak spots, I'd imagine, when it comes to false positives ..
The big gearhead motor with the roller chain powers the chimer, and, apparently, its schedule is totally controlled by the PIC microprocessor. There are remnants of a mechanical striking train at the lower right. Notice the curved rack. It doesn't seem to be doing anything. Usually there would be a snail, a stepped cam that tells the chimer what hour it is, read by a cam follower attached to the rack. That may have been present at one time, but it's gone now.
The chimer apparently gets tripped on the hour, but has no idea what time the time train is displaying. So time train and chimer CPU have to have their hour set separately.
Fred Dibnah was a treasure. If you enjoyed 5 minutes of Big Ben, here's an hour of his day job in heavy industrial steeplejacking - "The Ups and Downs of Chimneys" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK2wF_-yoEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl_UA36ouzM&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wl...
long-long-short-short-short is 7 in morse code. They don't say what time they tried this or if it ever changed, though, so that's just a hypothesis.
Perhaps the long-press commits the hour, which is why it rang once initially.
I didn't build the chime box but it looks like the sort of thing I used to do back then.
Couldn't it be just binary
long-long-short-short-short
11000
Which is - to everyones surprise - 24 as in hours.
----- 0000
.---- 0001
..--- 0010
...-- 0011
....- 0100
..... 0101
-.... 0110
--... 0111
---.. 1000
----. 1001
We moved in to the house in 2003 and that battery died this year, so I would imagine that it is already or will very soon die. That said, if it's a backup battery and the electricity supply is stable then it may not make any difference.
https://www.rapidonline.com/yuasa-yuvolt-yucel-y1-2-6-valve-...
https://static.rapidonline.com/pdf/18-5207_v2.pdf
Design spec is up to 5 years. The one in the photo looks like it may have a date written in Sharpie on the side. I don't think it's 25 years old though. The "090323" on top could be DDMMYY indicating a battery from 2023.
If someone knew to replace the battery just three years ago, I would expect they also would have enough knowledge to set the clock itself. Or at least explain what was going on. Maybe this person isn't connected with the building anymore. But I would expect the new owners would be able to contact the old owners for help on this instead of sending a generalized call for help.
I could just hear the clockmaker James Martin calling me a butcher in his disapproving manner
The building also was "out of operational use by Police Scotland for almost 10 years" and was purchased for community ownership earlier this year, according to [2]
> If someone knew to replace the battery just three years ago, I would expect they also would have enough knowledge to set the clock itself.
From the pictures, it looks like this clock needs to be manually changed on the last Sundays of March and October, for the start and end of daylight savings (they also need to be re-set any time there's a long power outage).
This article is dated early April; it's possible the new community owners of the building (and clock) just needed someone to adjust it by an hour.
The motor in the photo is probably a synchronous AC motor, where the rotation of the shaft matches the exact frequency of the AC supply. Then a long series of gears converts 50 rotations per second to 1 rotation per hour. Which avoids gradual clock drift - but without the fancy digital control needed to automate the daylight savings adjustments.
Nowerdays, you can buy 'clock controllers' [3] that take care of daylight savings time etc automatically.
[1] https://www.hardwarexpress.co.uk/pages/yuasa-date-codes [2] https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-plans-... [3] https://www.hawkinsclocks.co.uk/clock-controllers
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yucel-Y1-2-6-Sealed-Rechargeable-Ba...
And I just found this EU Declaration of Conformity which includes the Y1.2-6 and says the date code is DDMMYY:
I guess the confusing part is mostly because of an international audience. If everyone used MDY it would feel less weird. Still sorts completely wrong.
Where do you get that from? Is this a confusion with dates spoken or written out in full as "March the 9th, 2023"? We're talking numeric form here, "090323" in the specific example, and I don't think the UK has ever used MDY for numeric forms.
I was just starting to think "doesn't Big Clive visit Edinburgh periodically?" and then OP's suggestion scrolled into view. :)
Sounds like a great video idea for him, really.
Of course the above all depends on the exact situation in your area. Some of them are just a social club, and some are not. Some of them have religious affiliations that you may not like. Some of them are good in abstract but you hate the particular people in them.
https://www.youtube.com/@DingDongitsthebellguy
He also posts on reddit under dingdongbellguy
Human writing, Claude could never!
They were acquitted.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/26/france.artnews
We didn't put it at #1 though! That is a confirmation that we made a good pick.
badoosh
....I'll see myself out
With the popularity of this post the "SCP" reference made me think Hacker News had some kind of antimemetics department.
Then I saw it was the Second Chance Pool and was sort of disappointed.
There were three identical street clocks in Edinburgh that the council there have tried to remove. They succeeded with the one at Tollcross.
Is the Jawbone coming back?
Edinburgh Council has a habit of taking things into storage and not putting them back.
One pleasant exception: the Ross Fountain. That's back in Princes Street Gardens and is a) now working and b) looking better than it did back in the eighties and nineties.
At first I thought the bell chime controller was a hobby project. Long ago there were many electronics firms in the Edinburgh area so someone who worked as an EE could easily have knocked up the controller using "appropriated" parts from work. But the soldering is not quite right. It's too good for a total beginner, but not good enough for a professional. Also the single chip I think implies an MCU of some sort, so it's not going to be more than about 30 years old. A date code from the chip would be nice.
Then I realized that "box to control church bells" is probably a thing and a quick Google search dragged up this: https://www.electronics-lab.com/project/church-bell-controll... note that the PCB in the 5th picture bears a more than passing resemblance to the one at Porty.
Fun fact: my Dad's mother's family ran a shop on the High Street in the late 1800's. The building is still there and is on the next block down the road from the police station.
Maybe you could get this one to do 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm weekdays, so you get the sound, but not the annoyance?
> I had hoped we could do a "test" by letting the clock chime thirteen
What in the Orwell
https://www.bromoseltzertower.com/about/virtual-tour
(The elevator motors are also up there so there's a lot going on.)
Also looks like it was hand assembled, by the component mounting. Wires soldered straight to board isn't great, but not a huge issue if stationary and undisturbed.
it's literally kittycorner from City Hall, and hasn't been running for a while...
i'd do it for free if i knew who to even bother about getting up into it
I've half an idea I did some networky stuff for the Community Wardens probably around the time that chime box was fitted - if you see anything marked Alvarion or Ceragon, it's probably got my real name on it somewhere.
I'd love to poke about in there some time, maybe if I'm down in that part of the world I can jump in and volunteer to help too.
I can heavily relate to this when debugging something that builds bottom up.
"It's gold-plated. It looks like a large clock cog."
sometimes you get paid because you know things, sometimes you get paid because you know how to figure things out.