Posted by John Doe 2 on 17/12/2022 09:55:15:
Just coming back to this thread, but haven't read every reply, so my apologies if this has been covered:
Measuring the pendulum by when the bob interrupts the IR beam is using a curved, reflective surface to break the beam. Might this cause some weird effects, owing to changing reflections and refractions around the surface of the bob as the curved surface moves into and out of the width of the IR beam? Might these effects not be symmetrical, and give rise to on/off measurement differences, giving errors and noise? Maybe try a flat IR absorbent plate to interrupt the beam instead? A small piece of cardboard maybe?
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Forgive me if I have missed it, but your pendulum seems to have no temperature compensation. I think some clocks have a negative temperature coefficient element which compensates for length variations of the pendulum owing to temperature changes, and your pendulum variations shows a close correlation to temperature variations.
Yes, reflections and ambient light both caused trouble in earlier versions of the clock. Not only the bob is reflective, but so is the Aluminium frame, the plastic LED holder, and the interior of the plastic pipe! Now mostly eliminated by blackening surfaces, reducing beam power, and protecting the IR detector with black plasticine. I should try shining the beam through slits. Breaking the beam with a curved surface is a worry, and it might explain some of the noise. Part of the experiment is keeping the mechanics as simple as possible, hence the bob does the breaking rather than a properly shaped flag. But you're right to be suspicious – it could be a problem!
My approach to compensation is different too. The strategy is to protect the clock moderately with a low temperature coefficient carbon-fibre pendulum rod, and by running it inside a vacuum, but mainly by fitting it with temperature, air-pressure and humidity sensors and using the data to correct the reported period of the pendulum to what it should be.
In a conventional clock, temperature compensation is applied mechanically to the pendulum, and the motion counts ticks at a fixed rate. In this experiment, the pendulum is uncompensated, but the software motion, not gears, is completely variable. The pendulum doesn't have to be perfect because compensation is done mathematically by the motion rather than physically in the construction. It still needs to be a good pendulum though!
First, the clock is run for a long time in learn mode. It runs uncompensated, logging it's notion of period, plus temperature, humidity and barometric pressure values on every tick. Log data is collected by a bigger computer that adds accurate NTP or GPS timestamps. Exactly how period is effected over a long time by environmental factors is measured, and converted into a simple y=mx+c formula to be applied in real time by the clock. The accuracy of the formula improves with sample size.
In stand-alone mode, the clock's motion, converting period to HHMMSS, is able to take the pendulum's reported time, know that it's wrong perhaps because temperature'changed, and correct the measured number to what it should be. The statistically found y=mx+c formula is used. So the motion counts HHMMSS based on compensated rather than actual period, and should be more accurate.
Dave