Comments on: Gear clock

By: Alan Parekh

Alan Parekh — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:04:50 +0000

That sounds very cool Friendly Neighborhood Psycopath! I would love to see what it looks like.

By: Friendly Neighborhood Psycopath

Friendly Neighborhood Psycopath — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:07:09 +0000

I ended up cutting one of these out of acrylic on a laser. It looked really cool, and I didn’t actually know what that second slot was for until I read the schematic for the controller. HOLY CRAP IT LOOKS AWESOME! Red LEDs behind clear acrylic makes this clock. It cost nearly $100 for the materials (acrylic is expensive) but it turned out really well. Thanks for posting this, Alan, it was a really cool project. I’ll see if I can post pictures somewhere to link to.

By: Alan Parekh

Alan Parekh — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:28:09 +0000

Hey guys thanks for the feedback!

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:54:46 +0000

Definitely more gear than fab, but groovy nonetheless!

;)

By: Abbott

Abbott — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:50:20 +0000

Agreed, i was thinking that it was aluminum plate at first… would have been badass… still an awesome clock though.

By: tehgringe

tehgringe — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:45:27 +0000

MDF!!! Eeeeeew.

But aside from that awesome project, but I wanted METAL…..

By: stunmonkey

stunmonkey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:36:35 +0000

Alright, My post was pretty long. It may have just been an accident then.
I just spent a lot of time on it and I wanted to see some other thoughts on the idea. I thought it ran afoul of the moderators for some unknown reason.

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:08:48 +0000

@stunmonkey,
Who is being censored? I’ve got a horrible case of the spams right now. I’ve deleted nearly 50 posts lately that are nosensical and off topic and all seem to fit an identical formula. Watch for them, they don’t make any sense and all end with a period, space, comma. like this. ,

I might have accidentally deleted something else, but I didn’t intend to.

By: stunmonkey

stunmonkey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:06:44 +0000

Nice new censorship system. WTF?

Do you have to fellate every project now to get to post?

By: Vaevictus

Vaevictus — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:34:38 +0000

Oops, you said that. :)

By: Vaevictus

Vaevictus — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:32:22 +0000

@pookey: A sundial :)

By: pookey

pookey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:10:48 +0000

@jason

I think a PIC chip is entirely appropriate for this application. With it, you get a crystal-controlled time base and a state-machine that will properly sequence stepper windings, as well as respond to user input for purpose of setting the clock. You get all that functionality for the cost of four parts… the PIC, two caps, and a crystal.

Whatever you use to sequence the stepper, you’re still going to need driver transistors and current-limiting resistors, so I don’t count those parts against this design. Even if you do, this is still a nice, lean implementation.

I’ll bet the guy who programmed it learned something about PICs, assembler, and IDEs, to boot.

BTW, What approach did you use for the gear clock *you* built?

By: pookey

pookey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:58:05 +0000

@sly

Interesting point… Can you think of *any* clock that is not inherently digital?

For example, an hourglass appears to be analog, but the grains of sand are discrete. Since the passage of time is represented by the number of discrete grains that have fallen, an hourglass is a digital clock.

Even a gravity clock using water drops is digital, and for the same reason. Measure time with a stream of water? Still digital, because water is composed of discrete molecules.

The only clock I can think of that is truly analog is a sun-dial.

Can anyone think of other examples?

By: sly

sly — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:33:42 +0000

it’s still a digital clock. a true analog would have continuous motion with a simple DC motor. any “ticking” would indicate a digital nature (even a purely mechanical clock that ticks is digital). The readout is the only thing that can be considered analog.
[/technicalities]

By: jason

jason — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:08:00 +0000

really? really? An /entire/ PIC system to give you a 4PPS square wave?