# Calling All Nerds, Calling All Nerds...



## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

Hi all

Well, plenty of computer, electronics and audio geeks about the place so it seems an ideal place to ask









No offence intended, of course, I respect geeks and wish I had the brains to be one.

Anyway, surely you lot can collectively come up with a means of rigging up a suitable microphone to my comfuster so that I can use it as a watch timing machine?

I know it has been tried before, with a complete absence of positive results as far as I can see, but hey it's 2005, so I'm sure things have moved on.

Si


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Great idea! But somehow you'd have to find a really sensitive, highy directional mic that could pick up the ticking of the watch and not the whirring of computer fans and environmental background noise. I guess you'd have to place the mic and watch in some sort of separate, acoustically shielded, anechoic chamber.

Also, maybe small delays introduced by the sound card and recording software processing the audio could render the results unreliable.

I'm not sure a computer is really the right tool for the job


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## adrian (May 23, 2004)

rhaythorne said:


>


 Everyone can do that.


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## ron (Dec 12, 2003)

Careful Si...........









Read Roy's comment about magnetism in the post below. You may have seen this post below - but in case not, thought I'd remind people of it.

Watch timing software / magnetism


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

I know - crazy idea like............

But why not just get a pen & paper & note every few hours how your watch is doing?


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## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

Thanks all!

I know, Paul! There is no sense in any aspect of watch collecting so just let me waste my time...

You would need a contact microphone for starters.

Si


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

adrian said:



> (rhaythorne @ Jan 11 2005, 04:39 AM)
> 
> 
> 
> ...










Then I shall bow before you and call you "Lord"


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> adrian said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 I just check mine by atomic clock, if it's on time fine. Maybe i'm not stringent enough


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

I forgot to add a WaveCeptor type watch to my list of wants for 2005! That'd do for me.


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## 036 (Feb 27, 2003)

Have Wave Ceptor. Have radio-controlled clock.

Want computer based watch timing machine.

I know watchmakers wouldn't spend Â£thousands on watch timing machines if there was a cheaper option - but I'd only want this to use occasionally and generally fart about with.

Si


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

I wonder if Roy ever sold this?









Cheers

Paul


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

You could take a look at Shareware Music Machine and see what they have available in the Metronome and Recording sections. Problem is, I doubt there are any metronome programs that run to 18000-36000 BPM (i.e. a couple of hundred times faster than most techno/dance music tracks







) but you may find one.

I'd turn your pop-up/advert killer program on first before visiting the site. It's a good site but they do like their adverts!

For the "chamber" in which to hold the watch and microphone, I was thinking along the lines of a biscuit tin or maybe plastic lunchbox heavily lined with foam leaving just a small space in the centre for the head of the mic and the watch. You'd need to punch a hole in the side of the box to pass the mic cable through and use a long cable so that the box can be placed in another room or perhaps inside a drawer, for example, so it's well away from the noisy PC.


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## Polo_Step (Aug 24, 2005)

Wow.

I was just thinking about this last night.

I got a pile of watch repair books from the library yesterday just to science on watch guts for a while.

When they got to the part about these expensive timing machines, I just stopped and said to myself, "there's _nothing_ in the round world keeping that thing from being junked and replaced with a quality condenser microphone and a two-bit computer program except for someone with the time to write the software."

Glad to see someone's ahead of me on this one.

As for the magnetic problem, that's negligible with quality condenser microphone (as opposed to a dynamic), and even if it was a problem, it could be taken care of with a tubular acoustic standoff. I doubt that latency would be significant and it could be compensated for in any case in well-writen software.

If anyone knows the name of the program (or programs) let me know.

Thanks!


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