If the plan is to drive a mechanical clock, I assume long term stability is 
more important than phase noise. Many small microcontrollers (I use 8051's from 
Silabs) have a built-in PLL that can be set to run at 15 MHz from an external 
10 MHz reference (applied to the external oscillator input), and use the 
program space to implement a divider that will give you exactly 60 Hz. That is 
a one chip solution. The processor will accept the sinewave from the reference 
oscillator without extra shaping circuit. 

Didier KO4BB

Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless thingy while I do other things...

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Griffiths <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:30:03 
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement<[email protected]>
Reply-To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
        <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] 50/60 Hz clocks

An OTT solution might employ a regenerative divider to generate a 15MHz 
signal from a 10MHz input followed by a digital divide by 250,000 circuit.
One could employ an inexpensive Gilbert cell mixer in the regenerative 
divider to keep the cost down.

Bruce

Bob Camp wrote:
> Hi
>
> Most likely the lowest parts count is to divide to a narrow(ish) 20 Hz square 
> wave and then drive a resonated transformer with a pulse. The output won't 
> look pretty, but it should drive a small clock motor just fine. Done 
> properly, there should be very little power involved.
>
> If you are going to use anything complicated, just run a gizmo that lets you 
> have a PLL at a factor of 3 times the input. Once that's done - problem 
> solved.
>
> Bob
>
> On Mar 19, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Michael Poulos wrote:
>
>    
>> Robert LaJeunesse wrote:
>>      
>>> Poor man's solution: Use an Arduino to read the Thunderbolt 1PPS and lock a 
>>> 50Hz (or 60Hz) square wave to the 1PPS. Any resulting jitter can likely be 
>>> kept in the tens of microsecond range, easily filtered out by the clock 
>>> mechanics. Filter the square wave a bit and feed it into an audio amplifier 
>>> (or two) of sufficient power to run the clock. (Possibly a 12V powered 
>>> bridge amplifier at ~14W would be adequate?)  Use some sort of audio output 
>>> or filament transformer backwards to create the proper line voltage to run 
>>> the clock. Maybe run the whole thing off a 12V battery with float charger 
>>> for uninterruptible timing.
>>>        
>> When using the power transformer "backwards" keep in mind the impedance 
>> output of the amplifier. Audio amplifiers are rated in watts into an 8 ohm 
>> (or 4 ohm) load. So, what you want is a power transformer of desired wattage 
>> and the low voltage side having a volt and amps rating that would match an 8 
>> ohm load or 4 ohm load. Then, you hook it "backwards" (i.e. as a step-up 
>> transformer) to an audio amp of a rating higher than the transformer then 
>> hook the signal to the input and use the volume knob as a throttle. Turn up 
>> until desired voltage is reached.
>>
>> Have fun!
>>
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