GOOGOL COUNTER - A Huge Electronic Counter That Wont Turn Off In My Lifetime 

I like to imagine a whole whole civilisation shaking in fear as the counter gets closer and closer to finishing. No records left of what it was actually counting, but maintained over the time.

Now you have to end every future video with a little shot of where the googol counter is at.

An idea why they all start at 6: These counters are fundamentally based on RS flip flops. Theoretically an RS flip flop would start in a random undefined state, but the silicon might be manufactured in such a way that one of the negative feedback paths is slightly shorter and therefore it always latches into the same state after power up. If the binary counter inside the chip is layed out in such a way that it latches to 0110, it will start at the number 6. I have seen similar non-random behavior with SRAM.

When it reaches a googol, it will reset and just display 42.

Oh yeah about those 6's. It's a well known bug with the 4026B chip where if you power up a certain number of them at the same time you open up a momentary portal to Hades. it's nothing to worry about.

we'll have to launch it into space as the sun fades

Seriously man this is an INCREDIBLE art project. Somebody is going to buy this at Art Basel in 100 years for 200 billion dollars.

Sam: _builds an electronic personification of existential dread_ Also Sam: How awesome is that!

You should add: 1) an ending message 2) some kind of memory protection in case it rans out of power so it can continue from where it was when power comes back 3) plans, circuits and any document needed for replacement parts... it will need a lot of plastic replacement, at least every 1000 years 4) timed control, I think miliseconds... in a millon years no one would be able where counting started

Dude, make a 24/7 livestream of it, I'd check in every now and then

When you demonstrated the audio out, my little standalone hamburger-style bluetooth speaker (with a grippy base) started to walk across the table as if it was running away. I've never seen it do that before. Fantastic work.

Power consumption idea: Have each module's display off until it's counter is greater than zero.

This is quite possibly the most important thing we'll witness this year. That's an absolutely amazing artifact. Super cool idea and an awesome culmination of your life's work.

It's kind of sad how none of us here will ever be able to see the counter finish, but I love the idea! Reminds of the "eternal flame" for some reason.

Little did he know that by doing this he had finally set an expiry date for the existence of our universe.

I would highly recommend makeing the thing air tight with a silica packet or two in the bottom of it to help prevent dust and corrosion in all honesty moisture is going to be what kills this thing over time

I love that none of us are going to see the third row change.

In one million years. "We don't know who built it but this device has come to unite humanity through the eons as successive generations tend to its maintenance. It's now 100 stories tall and counts much faster but it's still based on the original design. Whoever this person was, he or she was a visionary and we honor him or her with great celebrations and festivals. Since, we've solved world hunger, poverty and made contact with countless civilizations throughout the galaxy. Thank you for visiting the Museum of Everything Else and the gift shop is on your way out."

Literally makeing history. This will 3nd up in a museum one day amd probably outlive humanity. I typed this around 9:80. XD glad he decided to put it in a museum

The cool part about this is that if you can build another counter and connect them, then the counter will be squared. If you build two of them, so that you have three, then it'll be cubed.

We need much more of your kind of craziness in the world, Sam. And much less of the other kinds.

The Count from Sesame Street would worship this.

"I've added an audio output" - massive 🎶

Wow. I'm in love with this. I love how everything is so modular and servicable. I love how there are rows of identical boards, it looks so neat and tidy. Now *this* is how you design a product! I'd rather replace a component twice a year on a product where replacement is an option, than have a product that can't be serviced that lasts for 10 years.

I'm learning about circuitry and electrical engineering this year, and now this channel's videos make a little bit more sense. I love learning about engineering.

Have to admit ... while working with numbers all day long ... throwing around scientific notation for this or that science and math ... I've not really played with the number Googol. You start with your 1kHz clock (I think you said) ... convert to minutes ... to hours ... to days ... to estimated years ... and you're still left with one whopper of a huge number. I appreciate the video and for sparking some thoughts. I also liked your addressing of rigorous robust electronics. Best of fortune here with your goal, and may the number you see on your machine be a big one. Thanks.

This reminds me of a project published in an electronics magazine in the mid-1970's. The first 1-farad capacitor had just been released and they wanted to come up with a project for it. What they came up with was a timer. You pressed the "start" button when your child was born, and on the day that child reached retirement age (65) it would sound a buzzer. Of course, it wasn't a serious project, but it was cool to see the prototype.

I like how you sometimes repeat what you just said a minute ago you just repeat what you just said, i really like that.

3000 years later: did we get the answer to life the universe and everything ?? No, but we got really high on this counter.

Reminds me of the clock of the Long Now, a mechanical time piece that endeavors to keep time for 10,000 years, and also has a musical element in its unique chimes. Thats a hell of an engineering feat as it has no ship of theseus factor, its set in motion and will run the entire duration, but I have no idea if it will be more successful than this with its ongoing maintenance plan. The race is on!

So... you build the LMNC Cloak... Technically I can tell you: "Hey, lets meet up at 10010 LMNC" and this time is absolute. No matter who you are and where you live, no translation from imperial, metric or other historical hangover. That makes you a revolutionist. You did what 195 Countries never could do on a political way. Bravo Majestro!

I seriously don’t understand 98% what you’re saying...but I’m on the edge of my seat.

a kit of 30 of the single cells would be a cool gift

Aaah this brings back memories from my engineering college days.... Frequency dividers and 7 segment displays. But I hate to be a buzz kill, but when a counter burns out you have lost that number! And the further you get in the array the longer it takes to have that reach back the point where it failed. And be sure you have an A+B power feed into your house :) We bought over a company once and they'd their servers all connected with redundant power they said. I look at those racks and I go like... Yeah you basically have redundant powersupplies. But if one breaks and shorts all goes black in here, as you have everything connected to one mains line. No we need to procure an extra B feed from the energy company, because this is "lame redundancy".

Oh cool, you made a real time counter of Jeff Bezos' income!

I can imagine in the distant future, when this is in an international museum, some trainee maintaining it, goofs up something and then manually setting the count to the last number and not telling anyone :D

How about blowing some components when moving up the count, like an SMD diode or resistor? Basically to use it as a kind of physical memory that can be used to restart the count if it is ever needed. You are awesome and the projects are incredible! Keep up the great work!

Im a vet builder. I wish I payed more attention when my dad was teaching me electronics. You sir are an Electro wizard! I feel you are an engineer from a cyber punk neon future. Mad cool!

The audio output made my cat freak out 😹

Reminds me of the infinite gear box....where the last gear is cast into cement and will never turn before the end of the universe.....awesome work!

He needs to check out "The clock of the long now". Meant to run for 10,000 years !

Thanks To My Patreons for supporting outlandish projects like this! the next livestream is tomorrow night :- www.patreon.com/posts/look-mum-no-2nd-46964864 Backing song from this vid and samples of the audio from the counter here! :- www.patreon.com/posts/46915256 VIDEO ANSWERING QUESTIONS ON THIS :- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OAD3pc7TjcY.html also ill be sharing gerber files and Schematics tomorrow here :- www.lookmumnocomputer.com/projects#/googol-counter picked up my broken sm7b and didnt realise till the end of shooting the vid. what a plonker For the doubters there are some things to bear in mind. The clock was purposeful made to be jnnacurate so it's impossible to predict milestones.. the acrylic enclosure is its first case I have focused on making something cool looking as time goes on I will make it more bombproof as it gets more important to me.

You are MAD , that's a compliment

Man this brings back old memories... My first counter only went to 9999... Built from an old clothes iron, tape deck, and car stereo, and powered by whatever battery I felt like hooking to it at the time.

How about a live count somewhere on the internet we can see? Ok maybe a trip to the museum of everything else is in order !

This thing is gonna end up in a museum being treasured and maintained by the science community for years to come

8:45 hopefully we get faster and faster clocks that'll speed up the process more and more. I kinda wanna make an incrementing game that requires you to count to a googol before you finish, but you can get faster clocks and you have to repair certain sections at times as to keep the clock going. Ultimately the game would probably be unbeatable as googol is a large number, 10^100

IRON Maiden!!!!!! Man, you have such an energy level, as an old dude I am envious but man, its super cool. This is a super cool idea as well, I hope you make a spare parts bucket to leave for your successor! What an amazing thing to think of where this may end up!

10,000 years later...LOOK, A MUMMY COMPUTER ; )

At this rate, he is making a computer... LOOK MUM, MY COMPUTER

I have a feeling this will literally be legendary...

You should have two identical ones and have the second one start maybe a year later. That way, you'll know what breaks first, and what to replace on the second one, before it to breaks.

Amazing

I love the quality mic with gain adjusted to reinstate distortion otherwise absent on less organic channels... brilliant!

You deserve a million subs dude, yet another awesome project!!

this needs it's own 24/7 live stream

This is a fabulous project!!! We need a page, so we can view it at anytime. If you need any help with it just reach out the the electronics community..!! One of my favourite videos.. take care Sam!

There needs to be a 24/7 live stream of this like the pitch drop, or the centennial lightbulb

man this is borderline genius. love to see how anyone's area of expertise grows into something utterly profound

Him making this is kind of revolutionary

You could also carve all the chematics for all elements of the counter into the avrylic itself so it is not only a monolith, but gets that "Rosetta Stone" vibe to it. At some point one day this will be an ancient schematic of ancient technology that nobody is capable of recreating anymore all just carved into the surface of the red monolith. :D

You just saved reality from collapsing in upon itself until the counter goes off! Thank You🙏🏻🙏🏻 Your saving of humanity will be mythologizied

Now that is a real time capsule! That's amazing this needs to hit MSM and it needs to be protected to make sure it keeps counting

came for the furby organ, stayed for the world rocking beginning of the count that will echo through generations

The moment you realize you wont live to see even a little bit of the 2nd row completed lol

There is a piece of music so long it has been, being played for 100s of years and a note happens every couple of years. On an organ in a church in Germany. It was finally interrupted buy covid I believe. This reminded me of that

This is so cool! I need one! That has to be such a great conversation starter.

Such a simple yet brilliant idea (and make). You are an hero!

Might be worth looking at using a master stable clock circuit, like one from a CDDA DAC external clock anti jitter module, 44. or 96. KHz etc, as 555 chips and op-amps chips have a habit of clipping (stalling with power supply bounce & interferance). Or just use a Fluke (Philips) frequency generator as the master clock. Keep up the crazy good work. Like to go to the museum of all your items.

I like to imagine this monolith ticking away, floating on in space long after Earth's star has been depleted of fuel, being cared for by some alien who turned their food replicator into a synthesizer.

Cool project! It amazes me how such small seemingly insignificant things can become gloriously useful when applied in specific ways at scale. Like binary for example, or an element.

Wow, thanks for this wonderful, geeky, inspiring and also humiliating video! I've spent the afternoon turning my ancient Raspi V1 from 2011 to an NTP server and struggled with the oh-so-complex schematics. Breaking off one of the cables was the icing on the cake. Clearly you are way more competent in electronics than me. I tip my hat!

are you going to put it on a permanent live stream so everyone can watch

The Long Now project is well worth checking out, too. Awesome thinking in the extra- long term!

That is Superb! Very well done, it looks so cool! 😎

"or in a vacuum" Sir, you just brightened something up on me.

suggestion : you could use each 7 segment display as a 128 counter , this would reduce the number of 7 segment display , it would make the contraption a lot less decipherable wich might add to the eldritch feel of it

You know what I was here when this started, hope I find this comment back in a few years when he’s explaining his new power supply system and replacing broken chips

People mention how funny it would be to have it be found in the future and the fear of what they think would happen when it finishes counting, much like the Mayan Calendar. The funny part is that if the Mayans made that machine, it wouldn't even be halfway the second row!

Wow such an awesome project cant wait to see it after many years

When it finally finishes counting, i'd love it if it played portals "still alive". And then started counting all over again.

I never thought my depression could become depressed but finding out my life is about the length of the 14th number ticking over twice if I’m lucky, just did that.

You have a lot of faith in civilization. The lights will go out long before the counter runs out.

You are a pure genius with plenty of time to do these remarkable feats of engineering very professional.

Imagine, in 50 to 100 years from now on, it will be like: "On the 31 of January 2021, while a Global Pandemic is still crashing the Economys of the modern World, history was written, by one single man... and his name is: LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER .

here a week after launch,will be back when I'm a grandpa.

Can't wait to come and visit the museum see you this year I hope

if i had to explain obsession to someone, i would show him your chanel, absolut legend!

Was anyone else super scared that it would fall over in the last shot?

Instead of making it go to zero when hitting one google you should make it count down back to zero again! Then make a time-lapse so we can watch it bounce back and forth! ;)

the coolest things I've ever seen u build. toooo rad.

You are staggeringly clever, i'm impressed.

Sees that APC unit: oh dear, we know what's gonna fail first. Good thing it has another power input!

Imagine a calander being made in the future around this machine.

This is, by far, THE most punk-rock shit I've seen in 5 decades! Awesome! Love your stuff!

This one is totally crazy: crazy idea, crazy design and crazy looks. Love it. 🍻 for using immortal 555.

Very nice idea, would be interesting to see a similar counter in binary

Negative-bias Temperature Instability will eventually kill all devices built with a CMOS process....including your CD4026s 🥺🥺. Especially devices that are on and static for long time periods. Basically, the gate threshold voltage on the PMOS transistors slowly goes up over time because charge gets "stuck" in the gate dielectric layer. The gate electric field then has to be stronger to create inversion in the channel and turn the device "on". Eventually, the PMOS transistors in those CD4026s will have their gate threshold voltages increased to the point they never turn on and the circuit no longer functions :'( This will likely take a very long time though as these are "big" transistors as this is an old chip. I think the smaller the gate area the more NBTI impacts it (??) Any how, it's an interesting process. The detailed device physics are over my head but look it up if anyone is into semiconductors!! Great video btw :)

I'm bloody impressed with this! You strike me as a biot of a chaotic person, judging by your other videos, but I admire the precision and forward thinking involved in building this!

Amazing, thank you for this