Fastest and smallest clock you can build?

    StormWing0

    Leads the Storm
    Joined
    Jun 26, 2015
    Messages
    2,126
    Reaction score
    316
    • Community Content - Bronze 1
    Just asking since I'm thinking of creating some auto firing weapons and need a very small clock that can get going as fast as able. The smaller and faster the better. Just mainly hunting for ideas.
     

    Olxinos

    French fry. Caution: very salty!
    Joined
    May 7, 2015
    Messages
    151
    Reaction score
    88
    Some remarks regarding Jaaskinal's clock:

    The long trails of activator blocks are used to control the speed of each rotator clock (which spins once to initialize delay blocks). She made a separate one for each of those so that it's easier to understand how to expand the clock, however, keep in mind you can reuse the same activation blocks for different speed controllers, that will dramatically improve the size of the blueprint.

    You can actually avoid the and gate in each "controlled" delay/not clock by using a constant number of blocks (5 in fact, and 1 additional not gate to activate it) to "break" each of those clocks:
    starmade-screenshot-0027.png (links from left to right, of top to bottom for the button->not)
    Connect the flip-flop to the delay-block of any number of clocks, and push the button when you want to stop them (to integrate it in jaaskinal circuit, connect a not gate to the activator block she uses like a switch and connect the button to it). This circuit will send two "very short pulses" (i call them instant pulses): one when the button is pressed, one when the button turns off (0.5s later).
    When the delay-block of a delay/not clock receives such a pulse, the delay block is updated, but only with the last state of the flip-flop (which is false). If the delay block was already "delaying a signal", this signal is overriden: the delay-block will turn off in 0.5s starting from now and nothing else.
    However, depending on the state of the not gate, the clock may continue after the first pulse (indeed, if the delay was on and the not was off, 0.5s later the delay will turn off, the not will turn on, and send a signal to the delay), so we have to send a second one to make sure we "override" the signal of the not gate.
    As a side effect though, turning off the clock will take 0.5s and will output n simultaneous signals (where n is the number of rotator clocks)

    If you use the previous modification, the moderately complex circuit for controlling the and gate we just removed (between the button activated by the rotator and the and gate controlling the delay/not clock) can also be removed, the button only has to be connected to the delay block of each clock.

    Hence, if you don't care about "garbage signals" when turning the clock off, you can modify Jaaskinal's clock to look like this:
    starmade-screenshot-0028-nq8.png

    Also, i attached a simple small rotator clock which will pulse each time the rotator finishes a 45° rotation at 100% speed (reuse the speed controller/activation module if you plan to use several).

    Edit:
    You can avoid the garbage signals with two flip-flops and two gates.
    The clock also tend to resynchronize in Jaaskinal's design, you might want to re-start the clock regularly or change the design if you want regular pulses.
     

    Attachments

    Last edited:
    Joined
    Jan 31, 2015
    Messages
    53
    Reaction score
    2
    • Purchased!
    Smallest clock I could think of would be button -> delay -> back to the button. that should pulse on and off, not sure about how it might be the fastest as it takes 0.5s pulses, but it's the smallest I could think of