Quarantine Clock Answers The Important Question

For many people, these last few weeks have been quite an adjustment. When the normal routine of work or school is suddenly removed, it’s not unusual for your internal clock to get knocked out of alignment. It might have started with struggling to figure out if it was time for lunch or dinner, but now it’s gotten to the point that even the days are starting to blur together. If it takes more than a few seconds for you to remember whether or not it’s a weekday, [whosdadog] has come up with something that might help you get back on track.

Rather than showing the time of day, this 3D printed clock tells you where you are in the current week. Each day at midnight, the hand will advance to the center of the next day. If you wanted, a slight reworking of the gearing and servo arrangement on the rear of the device could allow it to sweep smoothly through each day. That would give you an idea of your progress through each 24 hour period, but then again, if you don’t even know if it’s morning or night you might be too far gone for this build anyway.

The clock’s servo is driven by a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 development board, which naturally means it has access to WiFi and can set itself to the current time (or at least, day) with NTP. All you’ve got to do is put your network information into the Sketch before flashing it to the ESP, and you’re good to go.

Naturally this project is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but we do think the design has practical applications. With a new face and some tweaked code, it could be an easy way to show all sorts of data that doesn’t require a high degree of granularity. Our very own [Elliot Williams] recently built a display to help his young son understand his new at-home schedule which operates on a similar principle.

20 thoughts on “Quarantine Clock Answers The Important Question

    1. Sometimes trash day changes. But they publish the dates, so bring on the slightly more complicated code.

      Awesome project. But I’d have them all be Sunday.

      Work ish Sunday
      Work maybe Sunday
      Work perhaps Sunday
      Work meh Sunday
      Work foo Sunday
      Pre Sunday
      Popper Sunday

  1. Not sure what the hubbub about “quarantine” is to begin with

    Scientists have shown that Ham Radio / Electronics hobbyists are one of the lowest likely groups to suffer
    mass infections of COVID-19 due to a lifetime of practicing Social-Exclusion. Yes the awkward lack
    of social contact with others is a huge asset to avoiding infection, as is the hours of isolation in
    front of radios and electronic equipment. Lack of hygiene is really not a factor here if the Ham has
    embraced the social isolation that is rampant in this hobby.

    Another thing to consider: “quarantine” only impacts “non-essential” people. Evidently, there are waaay too many ‘non-essential’ people around if the complaining is so rampant.

    But, from a management perspective –

    https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-18

    1. Rob, I want to contact you about your fan speed controller (c. 2013). The archive of project files is AWOL (404). I found one copy on Archive.org but the pcb file is corrupt.

      You can contact me at sparkyguy442@ the popular mail domain beginning with “Y”.

      Thanks!

    1. I was working 12 hours days 7 days a week a home in a startup for a while. If I had a clock, it would only say Work day, work day, work day…

      As for retirement clock, shouldn’t the days be marked Matlock Sunday, Matlock Monday… Matlock Saturday?

  2. nice idea, especially with the use of layer/color switch, for contrast.

    but why the use of the odd looking ‘y’ ?

    do you crave TRS-80 fonts or something?

    (please redo the face with regular ‘y’; just shift things up a tiny bit, yeah?)

  3. If someone could make a clock project that took the time from the wifi beacon without connecting it would allow a clock to work anywhere without having to connect.
    This would Shirley be a big improvement but I tried and failed.

  4. Interesting how much visual effect comes from not placing the “tail” of the “Y” below the bottom radius line of the other letters.
    I truly appreciate the skills and minds of any~all designers who just somehow get things to match what so many of us monkeys have preference to.
    That said?
    The “y” does look like someone has just shot “stickman” in the back.
    Either that or one legged Gumby has tripped over his box of salvaged components.

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