APPLICATIONS OF COUNTER

1. DIGITAL CLOCK

One of the most important applications of

counter is DIGITAL CLOCK– the time clock
which displays time day in hours, minute and
seconds also the date of the year as months
and days.
•
 Cont……
 A 60HZ signal is sent to a schmitt-trigger to
convert to a square pulse at a rate of 60pps
and this pulse is sent to 60-MOD counter to
divide the 60pps into 1pps.
 The 1pps is fed to the SECOND section of the
digital clock as showed in above diagram.
 Cont…..
 The BCD counter advances one count per second.
 After 9 seconds the counter recycles to 0 which
triggers the MOD-6 counter and causes to
advances one count.
 This continues for 59 seconds at which point the
MOD-6 counter is at 101(5) and the BCD counter
is at 1001(9) which means 59 seconds.
 The next pulse recycles the BCD counter to 0
which in turn recycles the MOD-6 counter to 0.
 Cont………

 The output of the MOD-6 counter in the second

section has a frequency of 1ppm(the MOD-6 recycles
every 60 seconds).

 This signal is fed to MINUTES section which counts 0-

59 minute and this section operates exactly similar to
the second section.
 The output of the MOD-6 counter in the minute
section has frequency of 1pph(MOD-6 recycles every
60 minute).
 This signal is then fed to the HOURS section and this
section works little bit different from that of seconds
and minutes.
 MOD-2 BCD

Figure 2: the hour section in detail

 Cont…..
 The above circuitry diagram shows the HOUR section
in detail.
 This section includes BCD counter to count the hour
units and single flip-flop(MOD-2 counter) to count the
tens of the hour.
 The incoming pulse from minutes section will advance
the BCD counter once per hour.
 When the BCD counter is at 1001(9) and another
pulse is applied the counter recycles to 0000 at which
the last flip-flop will be toggle and out put X is HIGH.
 Cont…..

 This produces a numerical 1 on the X and

numerical 0 at BCD displays so that the
combination of the two display shows “10” o’clock.
 The next two pulse advances the BCD counter to
display “11” and “12” o’clock.
 The next pulse advances the BCD to 011(3), but at
this time the counter’s Q1 and Q0 are both HIGH
and so is X so that the NAND gate goes low and
activates the CLEAR and PL of the BCD.
 This CLEAR X to 0 and PRESET BCD to 0001.