Polarizer clock with rainbow glow clockface

Bending Light, Bending Time: A DIY Polarizer Clock

January 7, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 7 Comments

Imagine a clock where the colors aren’t from LEDs but a physics phenomenon – polarization. That’s just what [Mosivers], a physicist and electronics enthusiast, has done with the Polarizer Clock. It’s not a perfect build, but the concept is intriguing: using polarized light and stress-induced birefringence to generate colors without resorting to RGB LEDs.

The clock uses white LEDs to edge-illuminate a polycarbonate plate. This light passes through two polarizers—one fixed, one rotating—creating constantly shifting colours. Sounds fancy, but the process involves more trial and error than you’d think. [Mosivers] initially wanted to use polarizer-cut numbers but found the contrast was too weak. He experimented with materials like Tesa tape and cellophane, choosing polycarbonate for its stress birefringence.

The final design relies on a mix of materials, including book wrapping foil and 3D printed parts, to make things work. It has its quirks, but it’s certainly clever. For instance, the light dims towards the center, and the second polarizer is delicate and finicky to attach.

This gadget is a splendid blend of art and science, and you can see it in the video below the break. If you’re inspired, you might want to look up polariscope projects, or other birefringence hacks on Hackaday.

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LED Wall Clock Gets Raspberry Pi Pico Upgrade

January 1, 2025 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

When [Rodrigo Feliciano] realized that the reason his seven-segment LED wall clock wasn’t working was because the original TG1508D5V5 controller was fried, he had a decision to make. He could either chuck the whole thing, or put in the effort to reverse engineer how the displays were driven and replace the dead controller with something a bit more modern. Since you’re reading this post on Hackaday, we bet you can guess which route he decided to take.

If you happen to own the same model of clock as [Rodrigo], then you really lucked out. He’s done a fantastic job documenting how he swapped the original controller out for a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which not only let him bring the clock back to life, but let him add new capabilities such as automatic time setting via Network Time Protocol (NTP).

But even if you don’t have this particular clock there’s probably something you can learn from this project, as it’s a great example of practical reverse engineering. By loading a high-resolution image of the back of the PCB into KiCad, [Rodrigo] was able to place all the components into their correct positions and following traces to see what’s connected to what.

Pretty soon he not only had a 3D model of the clock’s PCB, but a schematic he could use to help wire in the Pi Pico. Admittedly this is a pretty straightforward PCB to try and reverse engineer, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

We had high hopes for KiCad’s image import feature when it was introduced, and it’s great to see real-world examples like this trickle in as more folks learn about it.

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FallingWater Clock Puts New Spin On A Common LCD

December 27, 2024 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

Sometimes, all it takes is looking at an existing piece of tech in a new way to come up with something unique. That’s the whole idea behind FallingWater, a gorgeous Art Deco inspired clock created by [Mark Wilson] — while the vertical LCD might look like some wild custom component, it’s simply a common DM8BA10 display module that’s been rotated 90 degrees.

As demonstrated in the video below, by turning the LCD on its side, [Mark] is able to produce some visually striking animations. At the same time the display is still perfectly capable of showing letters and numbers, albeit in a single column and with noticeably wider characters.

In another application it might look odd, but when combined with the “sunburst” style enclosure, it really comes together. Speaking of the enclosure, [Mark] used OpenSCAD to visualize the five layer stack-up, which was then recreated in Inkscape so it could ultimately be laser-cut from acrylic.

Rounding out the build is a “Leonardo Tiny” ATmega32U4 board, a DS3221 real-time clock (RTC), a couple of pushbuttons, and a light dependent resistor (LDR) used to dim the display when the ambient light level is low. All of the electronics are housed on a small custom PCB, making for a nicely compact package.

This build is as simple as it is stylish, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired more than a few clones. At the time of writing, [Mark] hadn’t published the source code for the ATmega, but he has provided the code to generate the cut files for the enclosure, as well as the Gerber files for the PCB. If you come up with your own version of this retro-futuristic timepiece, let us know.

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Lathe Gears Make A Clock

December 27, 2024 by Al Williams 11 Comments

When you think of making something using a lathe, you usually think of turning a screw, a table leg, or a toothpick. [Uri Tuchman] had a different idea. He wanted to make a clock out of the gears used in the lathe. Can he do it? Of course, as you can see in the video below.

Along the way, he used several tools. A mill, a laser cutter, and a variety of hand tools all make appearances. There’s also plenty of CAD. Oh yeah, he uses a lathe, too.

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A visual timer for toddlers that uses LEDs that go out.

Time Management For Toddlers

December 25, 2024 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

It’s really never too early (or too late) to learn time management. All joking aside, carefully managing one’s time can result in some really wondrous achievements. So it’s best to learn early, when most of your time is spent generally having fun.

Let’s say you’ve just heard you have five minutes left to play, but what does that mean if you’re three years old? Not much, unless you have some visual cues to go by. That’s the idea behind [Julius Curt]’s visual timer for toddlers.

This lovely reverse progress bar uses a Wemos D1 mini to control a strip of six WS2812B LEDs at 30 LEDs/meter density. There’s a small OLED display for literate users, and the whole thing is childproof. [Julius] challenged himself to do this entire project in one day, and ended up finishing it in a little over eight hours total, including time to design the way cool knob. Be sure to check out the build video below.

If you struggle with managing your time, check out our own [Arya Voronova]’s personal account.
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E-Paper Anniversary Counter Is A Charming Gift With Minimal Power Draw

December 23, 2024 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

[Lonyelon] wanted to build an anniversary gift for his girlfriend. He decided to say it with e-Paper, a wise choice given its persistence and longevity.

The project is an anniversary calendar. It displays a counter of the total time the couple has been together, measured in years, months, days, and hours—so it’s remarkably precise. [Lonyelon] also programmed it to display additional counters to create plenty of additional fun anniversaries—the couple can celebrate milestones like their 1000th day together, for example. It also cycles through a range of cute messages and displays photos of the couple together.

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Making A Mechanical Watch From Scratch Is Fine Work

December 20, 2024 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

There are plenty of hard jobs out there, like founding your country’s nuclear program, or changing the timing chain on a BMW diesel. Making your own mechanical watch from scratch falls under that umbrella, too. And yet, [John Raffaelli] did just that, and prevailed!

Only a handful of components were purchased—[John] grabbed jewels, sapphire crystals, the strap, and the hairspring and mainspring off the shelf. Everything else, he made himself, using a fine touch, a sharp eye, and some deft work on his machine tools. If you’ve never worked at this scale before, it’s astounding to see—[John] steps through how he produced tiny pinions and balance wheels that exist at sub-fingertip scale. Even just assembling something this tiny would be a challenge, but [John] was able to craft it all from scratch and put it together into a functioning timepiece when he was done.

The final piece doesn’t just look great—we’re told it keeps good time as well. People like [John] don’t come along every day, though we do have one similar story in our deep archives from well over a decade ago. If you’re cooking up your own bespoke time pieces in your home workshop, don’t hesitate to drop your story on the tipsline!