So today I wanted to mess around with making a timing machine. I had this idea in my head for a while now, and I figured, why not give it a shot? I didn’t really have a clear plan, just a vague notion of creating something that could accurately track time intervals.

I started by gathering some materials. I found an old circuit board I had lying around, grabbed some wires, resistors, and a few LEDs. I also dug out a microcontroller that I had previously used for another project. It was an old model, but I figured it would do the job.
The first thing I did was to set up the microcontroller. I connected it to my computer and started fiddling with the code. I basically wanted it to act as a counter, incrementing a value every second. After some trial and error, I managed to get it working. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.
Next, I wanted to display the time in some way. I decided to use the LEDs for this. I wired them up to the microcontroller, assigning each LED to represent a different digit. I had to write some more code to control the LEDs, making them light up in the correct sequence to display the time. This part was a bit tricky, and I had to do some debugging to get it right.
After getting the LEDs working, I moved on to the timing mechanism. I wanted something that could accurately measure time intervals, so I decided to use a crystal oscillator. I connected it to the microcontroller and wrote some more code to read the oscillator’s frequency and calculate the time. This was probably the most challenging part of the project, and I spent hours tweaking the code to improve the accuracy.
Finally, I put everything together. I soldered the components onto the circuit board, making sure all the connections were secure. I also added a small button to start and stop the timer. It was a bit of a mess, with wires going all over the place, but it was my mess, and I was proud of it.

I powered it up, and… it worked! Well, sort of. The LEDs lit up, displaying the time, and the timer started counting when I pressed the button. It wasn’t super accurate, but it was good enough for my purposes. I spent the rest of the day experimenting with it, timing different things around the house. It was pretty fun.
- Get the stuff:
- Old circuit board
- Wires, resistors, LEDs
- An old microcontroller
- Make the microcontroller count:
- Connect to computer
- Write some code to make it count seconds
- Show the time with LEDs:
- Wire LEDs to the microcontroller
- More code to make LEDs show the time
- Make it time accurately:
- Use a crystal oscillator
- Connect to microcontroller
- Even more code to read frequency and calculate time
- Put it all together:
- Solder everything to the board
- Add a button to start/stop
- Try it out:
- Power it up
- See if it works
It’s not perfect, but hey, I made it. And that’s what counts. It’s a reminder that with a little bit of effort and a lot of patience, you can create something from scratch, even if it’s not the most polished or sophisticated thing in the world.