Relay-based projects

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Falstad's Circuijs now has relays !
Yann Guidon / YGDES • 06/27/2021 at 21:51 • 0 comments

I was trying to simulate my incrementer's new carry logic and noticed a new feature in http://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html : configurable relays !

You can edit the coil's inductance and resistance, the contact's on and off resistances, the coil's on current and the number of contacts. Still missing is the off current so this is not yet ready to simulate hysteresis. I sent a bug/feature request ;-)

This page already has some links to relay simulators but circuitjs stands on its own and does many things, moderately well but well enough for most cases. I used it a lot to simulate many types of circuits and now even more !

What else do you think is still missing from circuitjs ?

(And for those who might wonder, here is the new circuit for the carry logic, using coils in series instead of parallel as in a previous attempt, so now the current is constant for each slice of 4 bits)

And the link to play at home.
UPDATE
Circuitjs now handles hysteresis ! Here's my first test with the experimental code :-) The new features will be soon integrated in the main dev branch.
Rory's computer
Yann Guidon / YGDES • 09/08/2018 at 09:55 • 0 comments

The TIM machine was featured at EMF !
You too can build your own machine :-)
April 1st video
Yann Guidon / YGDES • 03/28/2017 at 04:02 • 2 comments

Sweet music composed by @Al Williamsl :-)
Relays are so simple :-)
Relay calculators on youtube
Yann Guidon / YGDES • 12/11/2016 at 16:51 • 0 comments

Covers the early electromechanical calculators :-)
The Harwell Dekatron / WITCH calculator, uses Dekatron tubes for storage and telephone relays for the rest. The oldest electronic computer that is still working !
The computational speed is crazy and tested "live" !
More links welcome !

Discussions

Mark wrote 03/29/2017 at 00:17

I'd like to be on the list. Relays are a big part of the games I've built with retired electromechanical pinball machine parts. Thanks. funwithpinball.com/games

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Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 03/29/2017 at 00:23

Welcome here !

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will.stevens wrote 03/24/2017 at 22:36

Hi, thanks for this great resource, please could you add my project. It's about making the relays from scratch, and then using the relays to make control circuitry:

https://hackaday.io/project/11914-relayreprap

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Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 03/25/2017 at 01:53

Sure ! Thanks for the notice !

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Dave Gönner wrote 05/21/2016 at 16:38

Can we include this one as well?

http://www.cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/indexen.html

It's a mechanical implementation of Pong, with relays for the game logic

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matseng wrote 05/22/2016 at 02:47

Thanks. I added it in its own section "Inspirational projects" since there was no real technical info like diagrams/schematics and such about the projects, just a BOM.

Still it's a very cool project that I'd love to clone some day - just as I like to build this awesome (non-relay) based mechanical Lunar Lander game some day as well. http://lushprojects.com/lunarlander/

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Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 05/21/2016 at 14:34

Where did you find the background/avatar picture ? I don't remember this one.

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matseng wrote 05/21/2016 at 14:50

I cheated there a bit. I couldn't find a nice clear picture of an real old relay computer so I took some random picture from an old thelephone exchange instead :)
http://www.bayern-online.com/v2261/artikel.cfm/203/Kennziffernspeicher.html

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Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 05/21/2016 at 14:53

relays are also used to control machinery such as elevators :-)

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Dave Gönner wrote 05/21/2016 at 14:06

Thank you for adding me to this project, I'm honoured to be in such great company. These are all fantastic projects! I hope we can come up with innovative ways of using relays, or at least inspire a relay revival.

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matseng wrote 05/21/2016 at 15:40

Hopefully it can and will. Or at least we will have use of the collection of projects :-)

I think your project is the most artfully laid out project in the list - especially for being bare pcbs. And also probably is one of the most useful of them as well...

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Dave Gönner wrote 05/21/2016 at 16:36

Thank you, that is a great compliment. I try to do my best. Functionality and visual appearance are both key considerations.

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Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 05/21/2016 at 12:50

Thanks for adding me, Mats, now it's your turn to show us what you can do with relays ;-)

Are you sure? yes | no

matseng wrote 05/21/2016 at 13:17

Still living without hardware :-( That's why I'm currently hacking away at the last entry in the list - the Relayser. When it's a bit more ready I can at least dry-run design a system while waiting for getting my stuff out of storage and shipped to a new place. But that is minimum two months away.

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YGREC16 - YG's 16bits Relay Electronic Computer https://hackaday.io/project/18757 (superseded by #YGREC-РЭС15-bis)
SPDT16: 16-bits arithmetic unit with relays hackaday.io/project/10889 (superseded by the above project)
Kalin-Burkhart Logical Truth Calculator hackaday.io/project/7871 (project vanished ?)
4 bit relay adder hackaday.io/project/3802
RISC Relay CPU hackaday.io/project/11012
Simple Relay ALU https://hackaday.io/project/162246-simple-relay-alu
Relay Puzzle Box hackaday.io/project/2075
Swifty's Relay Clock Project https://hackaday.io/project/55956
Relay Logic Clock hackaday.io/project/8683
Relay Computer hackaday.io/project/10303
RelayRepRap https://hackaday.io/project/11914-relayreprap
Brainfuck relay computer https://hackaday.io/project/18599-brainfuck-relay-computer
4 bit relay adder https://hackaday.io/project/3802-4-bit-relay-adder
4-bit Relay ALU (РЦВМ-1) https://hackaday.io/project/159308-4-bit-relay-alu-1
RELAY COMPUTING https://hackaday.io/project/163254-relay-computing
R200 Relay Computer https://hackaday.io/project/160710-r200-relay-computer
Super Micro Relay Computer https://hackaday.io/project/167895-super-micro-relay-computer

Harry Porter's Relay Computer web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay (see the video )
i² (i Squared isquared.weebly.com
Basic relay computer electronixandmore.com/projects/relaycomputer
Relay Computer Two electronixandmore.com/projects/relaycomputertwo
RC-3 computerculture.org/projects/rc3
Zusie www.nablaman.com/relay YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxTUNOQS56cvNHgRD5bKMsg
Mercia relaiscomputer.nl
Relay calculator simonwinder.com/projects/relay-calculating-engine (broken) YouTube video of the square rooting machine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8luQnyM9A (2014)
Paul Laws's Relay Computer relaycomputer.blogspot.my moved to https://relaycomputer.co.uk/
Clicks clicksrelaycpu.blogspot.my
A fistful of relays github.com/Dovgalyuk/Relay/wiki/Build-log
Radiolok rln.nnov.ru/index.php github.com/radiolok/RelayComputer2 tqfp.org/radiolok/releynaya-evm-versiya-2-releynaya-logika-alu
TIM series northdownfarm.co.uk/rory/tim
Duo 14 Premium ostracodfiles.com/ostracod/relay.html
R500/7T strangecalc.ch Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67jLony0mXg
Simon relay processor cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon
Relay Trainer relaysbc.sourceforge.net
Relaiscomputer relaiscomputer.de/pr.htm
Relaisrechner schlaefendorf.de/relaisrechner/dokumentation
4-Bit Relay Adder brainlubeonline.com/relaycomputer/RelayFramer.html
Neodem ALU/Computer neodem.com/.../relay-computer
TD4 with relays http://www.geocities.jp/team_zero_three/TD4/
Relay Computer http://www.xpl0.org/rr6/

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Falstad's Circuijs now has relays !

UPDATE

Rory's computer

April 1st video

Relay calculators on youtube

Discussions

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