DATOR 10 FLIP CLOCK

Solari Udine Dator 10 Flip Clock

The Solari Dator 10 is the queen of flip clocks. Mine came from it's birth country in Italy, complete with its Italian markings. It's a very early model, as you can tell from the metal only parts (later models have some plastic gears), so mine is most probably a 1957 example. Mine is also a slave clock: it does not have a synchronous motor to drive the clock. Instead you have to drive it with 12V or 24V pulses of alternate polarity every minute. Below you'll find below the restoration videos, the documentation I gathered, and the plans for pulser I made from an AVR Olimex proto board.

Video Series

Dator 10 Documentation

Solari Clock Pulser Circuit

This is the pulser circuit I made to drive the clock and that you can see in the restoration video Part 4. There are other pulsers available on the web, but I found them very annoying as they don't have a convenient user interface, which makes adjusting the time a real misery. I built mine on a Olimex AVR-128 board, but you should be able to port the code to any ATmega based device that is attached to a standard LCD screen and a few buttons. The AVR pulses drive a pair of relays installed on a small daughter board at the back of the eval board, that in turn switch 12V pulses to the clocks with alternate polarity every minute.

To reproduce this, you need to upload the .hex code file below to the Olimex board. You also need to build a daughter interface board with two transistors and two relays to generate the alternating +12V and -12V pulse drive signal to the clock from the two 5V pulse output produced by the Olimex board. I never made a PCB for that board, so I only show my sketches I used to make my Jameco proto board. If you ever make a clean PCB for the daughter board let me know.