thanks for the link Michael that is exactly what I have been looking for, never thought to build from a kit.

cheers Brian

My curiosity is piqued far more by this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Neil

(P.S. don't take the trout seriously – I pressed ctrl-v and it appeared at random, as I'd copied it a couple of hours ago! – I thought it was vaguely appropriate)

What would worry me more is the kit of parts in the first link shows 2 resistors but the built up ones shown have four

That would be a rip off if you did not get all the parts.

Edited By JasonB on 16/09/2019 20:36:38

I must admit, I do like these clock kits. I'm not into the electronics side, more the soldering and assembly. They are great fun to build, and out of 4, from differing suppliers, I've had one bad one.

https://ebay.us/aM9wjD

They are available from banggood too.

Oh, and a cheap USB power plug from poundland drives them just fine

Edited By Lainchy on 16/09/2019 21:05:02

Edited By Lainchy on 16/09/2019 21:05:12

Wow! Big price "reduction" from £46 to £16, quite a fair old "come on"

I get this all the time especially with Arduino stuff , i can buy one from here in OZ for around $30 au for an Arduino nano clone from a local electronics supply store or pay $5 from China off ebay – only thing is i have to wait for it to get here but for the same $30 i get five units .

I have also been looking at an ESP32 board and they are also around $30 – $40 from the same local supplier but ebay and banggood both have them for $8 so i can understand where MG is coming from as it is not a few dollars difference its five times more expensive ! Sure i can understand a supplier having to pay freight and the need to make a quid etc etc but seriously do they need to mark it up that much ? I suspect they would be paying a couple of dollars each for them so if they need to be that greedy i’m happy to wait a few weeks for my stuff to come from China and the local guy can sit there watching their overpriced items collect dust .

The UK(?) vendor is trying to mislead some purchasers. They show a kit which has been fully built up, while actually supplying it only in component parts without making it very clear that the pic is the finished project after being built by the buyer..

Some will, invariably, assume the fully built up unit is a clock in kit-form and as such requiring that module as part of a complete clock – the rest being the housing which could be purchased separately or made from scratch by the model clock builder.

Savvy buyers would not have ‘the wool pulled over their eyes’ but some will, no doubt, not get what they thought they were getting. That is not the way to get subsequent orders, I would suggest, as there will be a lot ot disappointed customers who may not have the soldering skills and would bin the item when either they could not build it or when it doesn’t work when finished.

Just sharp practice. I, for one, would not buy anything from a supplier that ‘hides’ facts, even if the are actually in full view. Legal? Yes. But still a sharp practice.

As Michael you've ordered the kit, and Geoff as you say you have a few, how good are they at keeping time?

15 or so years ago I used an 8 pin PIC to replace the mechanism in a cheap ball bearing clock when the contacts stopped triggering the ball lift arm and driven by a crystal I had to calibrate the system and add a cal factor in the firmware to get to within a minute every 6 months.

Nowadays, I just put an RTC on board, which I can't see on those boards. Would be interesting to know if I don't need to!

Done having seen comment in other thread.