Guess what time it is– that’s right, clock time! It’s always clock time, and when it’s clock time at Hackaday the weirder the better. So, how about a water clock that’s not actually a water clock? The water here has nothing to do with timekeeping, but is what’s driving the display. Fair to say that [Strange Inventions] is living up to the name of his YouTube channel.
You can get the idea from the header image: each digit is formed by a fifteen-segment display made up of glass bottles. A stepper-driven peristaltic pump and some membrane-pump boosters fills the bottles as needed with dyed water, while emptying is accomplished simply by having a servo dump the water into a trough. It’s an interesting, albeit messy, way to generate a display.
It wasn’t the original idea– well, the bottles were the original concept, but flipping them was not. Dumping the bottles has the advantage of not needing oodles of pumps or taking five minutes to sequentially fill and drain the bottles at each digit. The linkage to get the servo to flip all nine bottles in one go took some troubleshooting– we can relate, since the physical half of such projects usually is the hard part– but after many modifications the 3D printed mechanism worked, and we think the results are worth it.
If you’re looking for the other kind of water clock, we featured one of those before, too. This one is also of ancient style, but makes use of modern electronics. It occurs to us that if one was really, really ambitious, they could expand this [Strange] project into a very damp flip-dot style display.
in my dream, a system of siphons would do it without any pumps or servos…just a steady trickle of water as input. not convinced my dream is really feasible :) seems like at the minimum you’d need a pressure-activated valve (a water transistor)
Operate the fill valves with a system of cams driven by a waterwheel. Can the speed of the waterwheel be regulated by an escapement?
More fun with liquid explosives where the clock is the bomb.
In terms of water as numbers….I prefer this:
https://openscience.org/fun-with-bessel-functions/
That might lend itself to curvy, 3-D prints if you can solidify the meniscus.
The clock of your dreams exists in Berlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_Flowing_Time
OK, I confess. I clicked “play” in the image.
If the display jars were greedy cups no additional hardware would be needed to empty a jar. Any jar that needs to change state just gets the standard amount of water
if you liked you could route the greedy cup overflow from the top cup to the cup beneath, all the way down. then when the top one flushes, all the cups beneath flush too.
and if you make the bottom cup have the largest volume, and the one above less, by filling with some sand, all the way to the top cup, then you can set the water of each cup individually with a serial method all with only a single pump for the column.
you could then duplex the other columns by slanting the digits slightly down to run the entire display from one valve, but it will be very slow, and wasteful of water.
That would be pretty cool, and save a lot of servos. Then again, this one is cool because of the servos. I suppose I have no choice but to build both. Either way, I feel like my own level of cool has decreased because my own clock is only an old Soviet vacuum fluorescent. The VFD is much more practical on the bedside table than water though.
I had idea for similar clock, but made with three transparent foil layers. Two layers would be heat-bonded (or glued) to have pockets for segments and have a small hole near bottom for each segment. Third layer would be bonded to allow channels for liquid from below. Inside the stand, there would be also two layers of foil to make reservoirs for liquid. Above each reservoir there would be an electromagnet and below a magnet or small steel plate, so when electromagnet is actuated, it squishes reservoirs and fluid goes up to fill segments.
I don’t have time to do this, so if you like, you can implement this idea.
Start of video has no middle segments, play and there they are. Confusing.
I think having it dump is better than sucking the liquid out anyway. It adds more to see and hear. It makes it more interesting. I’d just increase the size of the trays until it stops spilling on the desk and call it perfect! But that’s just my 2¢.
They should connect with the hidraulic robot dude from a few weeks ago and do a purely hidraulic clock.