Designing And Building A Wooden Mechanical Clock

March 19, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 16 Comments

Electronics are undoubtedly the basis for our modern society. Leaving out transistor-based devices, and a mechanical clock would be one of the most intricate devices man has come up with. As a Mechanical Engineer, I thought it would be a fun challenge to design and build my own gear-driven clock.

Because clocks have obviously been invented, I wouldn’t be starting from scratch, and I don’t think I could have figured out an escapement on my own. I explain my initial clock escapement and gear reduction design thoughts in this post, and originally getting the escapement to work was my biggest fear.

As seen in the first video after the break, the escapement gear is still a big problem, but not really for the reason I expected. The shaft that the gear sits on seems to be bent, so it allows the escapement to “go free” for part of it’s cycle, losing any sense of accurate timekeeping. Be sure to also check out the second video, especially around 1:50 when I show what happens when an escapement gear goes much faster than a normal clock. Continue reading “Designing And Building A Wooden Mechanical Clock” →

A Clock That Uses Sixty RGB Pixels

March 13, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Here’s a project inspired by a highly polished art piece. [Tobias] has been working on his own RGB LED clock which uses one light for each minute in an hour. He was inspired to start the project after seeing the Equinox clock. That one used a little PCB for each LED, and included an acrylic bezel and diffusers for each light. With the advent of LED pixel strings assembling one of these for yourself has become quite a bit easier.

The key part of the project is the laser-cut plywood frame which has a finger between each digit in order to perfectly space the lights. Each pixel is hot glued in place, with the Arduino board which drives them at the center of the frame. These lights are super bright, so [Tobias] also included a light dependent resistor which allows the system to measure ambient light and modulate the pixel brightness accordingly.

There are four parts to his project post so make sure you take some time to click around in order to get all the gritty details.

VFD Tube Clock Built Using Protoboard And Free-formed PSU

March 2, 2013 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[James Glanville] wrote in to show of his latest tube project. It’s a clock using six IV-3 VFD tubes. In addition to the tube displays the project prominently features a blue 3D printed case which hides away all the guts of the build including the Stellaris Launchpad which drives the clock.

Speaking of guts, you’ll want to look through a few of [James’] other posts on the project. His first write-up on this clock shows off the protoboard and point-to-point soldering that makes the tubes work. To help simplify things he went with a MAX6921 VFD driver chip. He mounted it dead-bug style on its own piece of protoboard and then soldered all of the necessary connections to the larger hunk hosting the tubes. There’s also an interesting post that details the switch mode power supply which ramps the USB 5V power all the way up to the 50V used to drive the displays.

If you like this you should check out the first VFD clock he built. We featured it a while back in a links post.

LCD-based QR Clock

February 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Here’s a new take on the QR clock concept that uses an LCD display. The concept comes from the work [ch00f] put into his two versions of a QR clock (both of which used LED arrays). The time of day is encoded using the Quick Response Code standard. This version generates a new code each second which encapsulates date, hour, minute, and second information. If you look at the image on the left you’ll notice the code is not centered. Take a look at the video after the break and you’ll see that’s because it’s bouncing around the LCD like a screensaver. Watch a little longer and you’ll see the psychedelic effects shown in the image on the right.

A PIC32 is driving the display. It’s connected to a DCF77 radio module which feeds the system atomic clock data. The color plasma effects are used to show when the device has locked onto the radio signal.

Continue reading “LCD-based QR Clock” →

Solar Clock Uses Capacitors For Style And Function

February 19, 2013 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

This solar clock was built using a lot of salvaged parts. We find it interesting that [Nereus] combined a ring of storage capacitors with a power cell (translated) to create a hybrid energy storage setup.

The machine translation makes it a bit rough to understand how this works, but the schematic helps quite a bit. The pair of solar cells, which were pulled from some cheap solar cellphone chargers, feed the bank of capacitors encircling the clock face. If placed in a room that gets plenty of sunlight the cells will top off the capacitors which then feed an ICL7663 regulator. We’d love to hear comments on this part choice, as it’s our experience that linear regulators are rather inefficient. But anyway, the regulated power feeds both the energy cell as well as the clock motor. When output from the regulator dips the battery picks up the slack. The project also includes a voltometer and thermometer which can be displayed on the tiny LCD screen just about the six o’clock tick mark.

Now if you want something completely battery-free you’ll have to check out [Jack Buffington’s] take on solar clock.

[Thanks Manekinen]

Lord Vetinari’s Clock Strikes Again

February 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Inspired by the maddening timepiece from Discworld, this clock keeps time, but anyone watching the seconds tick by may be mentally unstable for it. [Renaud Schleck] built the stuttering clock using very few components. He undertook the build after being inspired by the version which [Simon Inns] built.

The clock itself is a run-of-the-mill item which uses one battery to keep time. We’re always impressed by how these dirt-cheap things remain so accurate over the long haul — but we digress. The method of attack uses coil injection to drive the hands. [Renaud] used one of the microcontrollers from the MSP430 Launchpad, along with the clock crystal which also shipped with the kit, to gain control of the mechanism. The crystal triggers an interrupt which does the actual time-keeping. The seconds hand is driven rather sporadically based on an algorithm explained in his write-up.

You can watch the uneven ticking in the video after the break. Despite that visually disturbing functionality, the short and long ticks balance each other and the correct time continues to be displayed.

Continue reading “Lord Vetinari’s Clock Strikes Again” →

GLCD Clock Project Packed With Great UI And Features

February 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

This Graphic LCD clock doesn’t have a fancy case, but [Gregory Wright] built in so many great features we think it will serve as inspiration for many projects to come. If he does decide to add a case it will be quite easy as there are no buttons to work around.

Without buttons how can the thing be adjusted? He decided to go with an IR remote control for all settings. This gives him a lot more options than a handful of buttons would have. Plus, heavy sleepers will need to find the remote control in order to shut off the alarm. We also think it’s interesting that the 595 shift registers he used have a low enough data high threshold (3.15V when VCC is 4.5V) that he didn’t need level converters to drive the 5V display with his 3.3V MSP430 Launchpad.

Check out his video after the break to learn about all the features he included in the UI. Our favorite is shown on the bottom right where it says “Hello World”. This is an area dedicated to a custom message for each day. He uses it to remind him about trash day (now there’s a feature!).

Continue reading “GLCD Clock Project Packed With Great UI And Features” →