JPS6147390B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a portable electronic timepiece that can modulate a step motor drive pulse waveform.

A watch that uses an electrical system to send the pointer movement, different from normal movement, was already released in 1972.
Known as 116076.

This watch uses this method to return the second hand to 0 seconds, and when the external operation for returning to 0 seconds is performed and the time held by the watch is between 30 seconds and 59 seconds, this is detected and the clock is reset. The second hand is configured to rapidly advance until the holding time reaches 0 seconds.

In addition to displaying and maintaining the time using the second hand, this watch is also equipped with an electrical time system to enable this second zero return method, so that the time held by the watch can be adjusted from 0 seconds to 29 seconds or 30 seconds. The watch is designed to be able to tell whether it is 59 seconds from the current time, but the second hand may also be moved quickly to match the time held by the second hand with the time held by the electric time thread.

These fast-forward operations involve transmitting, for example, a 32Hz signal to the electronic clock's drive circuit instead of the 1Hz signal used for normal time advance, and using the drive pulses formed there to drive the step motor to rotate faster than normal. allows fast forwarding.

This drive pulse waveform has the same voltage and pulse width both during normal time advance and during fast advance.

However, during rapid forwarding, the next drive pulse was transmitted before the rotor of the step motor was at a static equilibrium point, resulting in two-step forwarding or erroneous forwarding. The following was found to be the cause.

The time it takes for the rotor of a step motor to reach the stationary equilibrium point after being driven by one pulse is:
The width of the drive pulse, in short, has a correlation with the drive current application time; around the application time for normal time advance, if the application time is short, it takes a long time to reach the equilibrium point, so when fast forwarding, The next pulse may be applied before the rotor reaches equilibrium, leading to two-step feeds or miss feeds.

Therefore, if the drive pulse width is made larger, this problem can be solved, but if the drive pulse width is increased to the normal time advance drive pulse width, the power consumption increases and another problem occurs.

Therefore, in the present invention, when the hand movement is electrically sent as opposed to the normal time movement, the step motor drive pulse waveform is modulated to a waveform that is different from the drive pulse waveform during normal time movement. It is an object of the present invention to solve the above-mentioned problems by providing an electronic watch for personal use.

This will be explained below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is an embodiment of a block diagram of a portable electronic timepiece according to the present invention.

1 is a reference signal generator, 2 is a frequency divider, 3 is a mechanical time keeping mechanism, 4 is a drive circuit, 5 is a converter, 6
7 is a wheel train, 7 is a hand, 8 is an electric control mechanism, and 9 is a time adjustment switch input terminal. 10 is a switching gate.

Under normal conditions, a 1 Hz signal transmitted from the output line 21 of the frequency divider 2 appears as the output line 101 of the switching gate 10, is transmitted to the drive circuit 4, and the time is displayed with the hands. A signal is transmitted from the time adjustment switch input terminal 9 to the electrical control mechanism 8, where it is determined whether or not to fast forward. When fast forwarding, the output line 81 becomes H, and the switching gate 10
is switched, and the 32Hz signal on the output line 22 is transmitted to the drive circuit. At the same time, this output line 81 becomes H,
When the input terminal 25 of the drive circuit 4 becomes H, the drive pulse waveform transmitted from the drive circuit 4 to the converter 5 is modulated, thereby preventing misfeeding of the pointer during fast forwarding.

FIG. 2 shows an embodiment of a drive circuit that aims to correct this misfeeding of the pointer by increasing the voltage of the drive pulse to achieve the same effect as increasing the pulse width.

Our experiments have already shown that increasing the drive pulse voltage shortens the time it takes for the rotor to reach equilibrium even with the same pulse width.

Reference numeral 21 denotes a detection section, which consists of one inverter 22 and two MOSTs 23 and 24 which also serve as drives. Reference numeral 25 is a detection terminal for detecting the operation start time of the calendar mechanism. When the detection terminal 25 is at L level, that is, when the calendar mechanism is not operating, the first MOST 23
is OFF and the second MOST24 is ON.
Conversely, when the detection terminal is at H level, that is, when the calendar mechanism is in operation, the first MOST 23 is turned on and the second MOST 24 is turned off.

26 is a power supply section, 27 is a positive terminal, and 28 is a negative terminal.

30 is a booster section with three diodes 31, 32,
33 and three capacitors 34, 35, and 36. 37 and 38 are charging terminals of opposite phases that are removed from a frequency division stage number faster than the drive cycle of the converter 5.

When the first charging terminal 37 becomes H level, the first capacitor 34 is charged, and due to the phase reversal, the second capacitor 34 is charged.
When the charging terminal becomes H level, the second capacitor 35 is charged by adding up the previously charged charge. Therefore, the voltage at point 39 is approximately twice the power supply voltage.

40 is a drive unit, which has a coil 5b and two pairs of CMOST
It consists of 41 and 42. 43 and 44 are gate terminals to which signals are alternately input every second from the frequency dividing circuit.

Since the circuit is as described above, the detection terminal 25 is L
When it is at the high level, the coil 5b of the drive section 40 is driven by the power supply voltage of the plus terminal 27 and the minus terminal 28, and when it is at the high level, that is, during fast forwarding, the coil 5b of the drive section 40 is driven by the power supply voltage charged in the third capacitor 36 of the boosting section 30. It will be driven with approximately twice the power supply voltage.

FIG. 3 shows another embodiment of the frequency divider circuit, switching gate, and drive circuit when expanding the drive pulse width.
50 corresponds to 81 in FIG. 1, and becomes H during fast forwarding. Reference numerals 51 and 52 are drive output terminals, each of which outputs alternate pulses every 2 seconds during normal time advance. For example, if the oscillation frequency is 32,768Hz, 53 is the 9th frequency division stage and the output is 64Hz, 54 is the 10th frequency division stage and the output is 32Hz, 55 is the 11th frequency division stage and the output is 16Hz, 56 is the 15th output stage and the output is 1
Hz, 57 is the 16th output stage and the output is 0.5Hz.

A, B, C, and D in Figure 4 show the waveforms at the positions with the same symbols in Figure 3, where D is a drive pulse with a pulse width of 1/128 seconds, and B is a pulse with a pulse width of 1/64 seconds. The driving pulses have a width of 1 Hz and a frequency of 32 Hz, respectively.

During normal time advance, the line 50 is L, so the D signal is output as the output signal of the switching gate 58, and the second hand is advanced once per second with a pulse width of 1/128 second. During fast forwarding, the line 50 becomes H and the B signal becomes the output signal of the switching gate 58, and the second hand is fast forwarded at a rate of 32 seconds per second.The pulse width at this time is 1/64 second, which is normal. It is twice the size of the time feed, so it can be fed accurately without two-step feed or erroneous feed.

As described above, the portable electronic watch according to the present invention has
When the needle is moved in a manner different from the normal time movement, the drive waveform of the step motor should be modulated compared to the normal time. The effect is great.

Note that the explanations in FIGS. 2 and 3 are just one specific example, and the illustrated numerical values are not at all important.

Also, as a method of modulation, if the two-step feeding of the rotor of the step motor could be prevented by some other method, it is conceivable that the pulse width could be modulated to be shorter than the pulse width for two-step feeding. Therefore, the method of modulation is not limited to the example shown.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is an embodiment of the configuration of a portable electronic watch according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is an example of the drive circuit shown in FIG. 1, and FIG. 3 is a portable electronic watch according to the present invention. In another embodiment, a frequency divider and a driving circuit are shown.
FIG. 4 is a waveform diagram of the signal in FIG. 3. D... Drive pulse waveform during normal operation, B... Drive pulse waveform during fast forwarding.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A reference signal generator, a frequency dividing circuit that receives a signal from the reference signal generator to generate a normal pulse and a fast-forward pulse, a time adjustment switch, and a selection signal for determining whether or not to perform fast forwarding in response to the operating signal of the time adjustment switch. an electrical control mechanism for sending out the normal pulse and the fast-forward pulse from the frequency dividing circuit, a switching gate for receiving the normal pulse and the fast-forward pulse from the frequency dividing circuit, and selectively outputting the pulse according to the selection signal; A drive circuit controlled by the selection signal, a converter that receives a drive signal from the drive circuit and converts it into mechanical force, a wheel train that rotates in response to the mechanical force from the converter, and the wheels. When the fast-forward pulse is input to the drive circuit according to the selection signal, the waveform of the fast-forward pulse is larger than the pulse width of the normal pulse, or A portable electronic timepiece characterized in that it is configured to prevent misfeeding of the pointer due to rapid forwarding due to high voltage modulation.