Domino Clock uses an electromechanical display
posted Dec 18th 2010 9:00am by Mike Szczysfiled under: clock hacks
This clock concept uses big dominos with changing faces to display the time. As far as we can tell they haven’t made it through to a finished product yet, but we loved the explaination of the engineering that went into the prototype. After the break you can watch [Eric] explain how he accomplished the design requirements of a slowly changing digit that uses no power to keep its state, which also uses low-power when changing state. To accomplish this he designed a flipping circle that stays put in both the white and black positions once set. When it’s time to change the digits, a coil is energized to push against a magnet in what he calls a single poled motor. Whatever the name, we want to build one ourselves!
[Thanks Alan]
I don’t know how innovative this is as it sounds just like some road side construction signs you see. Bright green circles alternate with black ones to produce text. Placing it into a small clock package with good design is nice, and definitely a cool hack of an existing idea.
Granted this one is much more power efficient. Not hating the post, just pointing out similarities.