With us chafing at time zones and daylight saving time (DST) these days, it can be easy to forget how much more confusing things were in the late 19th century. Back then few areas had synchronized their clocks to something like Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or other standards like London time or Paris time, with everyone instead running on local time determined by as solar time. This created a massive headache for the railways, as they somehow had to make their time schedules work across what were effectively hundreds of tiny time zones while ensuring that passengers got on their train on time.

In a recent video [The Tim Traveller] explains how the creation of so-called Railway time sort-of solved this in France. As railroads massively expanded across the world by the 1850s and travel times dropped rapidly, this concept of Railway time was introduced from the US to Europe to India, creating effectively a railway-specific time zone synchronized to e.g. London time in the UK and Paris time in France. In addition to this, French railways also set the clocks inside the stations to run five minutes behind, to give travelers even more of a chance to get to their train on time when stuck in a long goodbye.

By 1911, across Europe GMT was adopted as the central time base, and the French five minute delay was eliminated as French travelers and trains were now running perfectly on time. If one wishes to experience what rail travel in the 1880s was like, travelers are invited to travel with Deutsche Bahn, who add a random delay to each actual arrival and departure time so that time becomes very relative indeed.

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hackaday.com/2025/07/31/railwa…

Frequency! It’s an important thing to measure, which is why [Jacques Pelletier] built a frequency counter some time ago. The four-function unit is humble, capable, and also an entry into our 2025 One Hertz Challenge!

The build began “a long while ago when electronic parts were still available in local stores,” notes Jacques, dating the project somewhat. The manner of construction, too, is thoroughly old-school. The project case and the sweet red digits are both classic, but so is what’s inside. The counter is based around 4553 BCD counter chips and 4511 decoder ICs. Laced together, the logic both counts frequency in binary-coded decimal and then converts that into the right set of signals to drive the 7-segment displays. Sample time is either 1 Hz or 0.1 Hz, which is derived from an 8MHz oscillator. It can act as a frequency meter, period meter, chronometer, or a basic counter. The whole build is all raw logic chips, there are no microprocessors or microcontrollers involved.

It just goes to show, you can build plenty of useful things without relying on code and RAM and all that nonsense. You just need some CMOS chips and a bucket of smarts to get the job done!

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When film all came in rolls, it was fairly easy to play with the frame of the image. Companies like Hasselblad (and many others) made camera backs that would expose longer strips of 35 mm film to create stunning panoramic images in one single shot. [snappiness] wanted to bring that style of camera into the digital age, and ended up with a 2-in-1 Sony-based frankencamera.

Sensors just aren’t readily available in the wide aspect ratio [snappiness] was looking for, and even if they were, bare sensors are hugely expensive compared to consumer cameras. Lacking the budget for high-res scientific CMOS, [snappiness] did what any of us would do, and hacked two Sony A7ii full-frame mirrorless cameras together to get a combined 24x72mm sensor frame.

Conceptually, the hack is really very simple: a 3D print acts like a T-fitting, with the two cameras held parallel off the arms of the T and the lens making the shaft. Inside, the only optics are a pair of mirrors serving as a beam splitter. Each camera sees half the FOV of the lens in its corresponding mirror, which means the images can be stitched together later to make the double-wide pictures [snappiness] is after.

Of course both cameras must be triggered at the same time, but with what looks like a headphone splitter and an aftermarket remote shutter button, that part works perfectly. The optics, not so much– as always with conceptually simple projects, the devil is in the details, and here it’s the mirror alignment where you’ll find Old Nick. [snappiness] made no provision for adjustments, so everything needed to be designed and built with very stringent tolerances. Somewhere along the way, those tolerances were exceeded; as a result, the two cameras don’t share a focal plane.

That means half the composite image will always be out of focus, or that the main lens needs to be refocused and two snaps taken, rather defeating the point the frankencamera. If [snappiness] attempts a version two, perhaps an adjustment mechanism to focus each sensor would be in order. Still, even if it didn’t work perfectly, he’s proven that the idea is sound, and we can’t imagine many people will see this and argue it isn’t a hack.

The world of film did make all of this easier, perhaps– we’ve seen large-format film cameras out of lego, and a panorama made from four full rolls of 35 mm film. If you know of any other great photography hacks– film or digital– don’t hesitate to send us a tip.

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hackaday.com/2025/07/31/double…

Sometimes, there are too many choices in this world. My benchtop function generator can output a sine, square, or saw wave anywhere from 0.01 Hz up to 60 MHz? Way too many choices. At least, that’s what we suspect [Phil Weasel] was thinking when he built this Analog 1 Hz Sinewave Generator.

A KiCad rendering of [Phil]’s design[Phil]’s AWG (which in this case stands for Anything as long as it’s a 1 Hz sine Wave Generator) has another unique feature — it’s built (almost) entirely with op-amps. A lot of op-amps (37, by our count of the initial schematic he posted). His design is similar to a Phased Locked Loop (PLL) and boils down to a triangle wave oscillator. While a 1 Hz triangle wave would absolutely satisfy judges of the One Hertz Challenge, [Phil] had set out to make a sine wave. Using a feedback loop and some shaping/smoothing tricks (and more op-amps), he rounded off the sharp peaks into a nice smooth sine wave.

Sometimes we make things much more complicated than we need to, just to see if we can. This is one of those times. Are there much simpler ways to generate a sine wave? Yes — but not exclusively using op-amps! This entry brings stiff competition to the “Ridiculous” category of the 2025 One Hertz Challenge.

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