When was the last time you looked forward to looking at a clock? Not to find out the time per se — like gee, maybe it’s beer o’ clock already — but waited with bated breath to gaze upon a particular clock? Never? We don’t blame you, but only because you haven’t seen this fruit machine clock in action yet.
Every 60 seconds, the reels start spinning like some little man inside pulled the lever on a slot machine (or fruit machine, as they’re called across the pond). The reels slow down and stop one by one, left to right, settling on the four digits of time in 24-hour mode. Imagine the suspense of coming to see what time it is just as the reels start spinning!
[timebanditclock] grew this fruit machine out of old-school discrete logic beautifully applied to stripboard. Each of the reels has a DIY binary encoder that uses IR transmit/receive pairs to generate a binary word. These four binary words are compared to a binary clock module using comparators.
We think this is an amazing concept already, but then [timebanditclock] worked overtime by doing it all in discrete logic. Spin past the break to see a demo and stick around for the build video.
Want a challenging clock build that’s a little less challenging? Maybe it’s time to try circuit sculpture.
You can just change the encoder wheels to make the selections out of sequence or to replace positions with valid numbers where a clock would never use those numbers in that position.
I was somewhat surprised that 4:20 doesn’t show “weed” symbols.
Or is is 16:20 ‘cross da pond?
P.S. Time Bandits is among my favorite 15 movies.
*sigh* Really? Looks like the guy spent weeks, if not months, designing/building this thing, and all you can think about is weed? No wonder they call it “dope”.
It is a good build, and I’ve never done weed, but when I saw all those fruits spinning around, that popped into my head.
I want to wake up at 98:71 just to see what happens.
You might wake up in another dimension.
Does it have a snooze button?
OK now he needs to put this in a proper case and have it pay out (or just light up) at the time you set the alarm.
Oh, and Fruit Machine is something different in Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_test)
would be wonderful in an old slot machine case… i had a burnt out one from vegas, too… drats.
Brilliant, great idea and execution. I admire your creativity.
Looks great. My only gripe is that it spins too slowly. If there were a way to kick them all up to a high RPM at the same time, and then stop them in the right spot as needed, it would look even better.
The discrete electronics is what gets me. Huge amount of effort there.