The Tower, a discrete component circuit sculpture clock

A Breathtaking Circuit Sculpture Clock

November 10, 2021 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Here at Hackaday, we pride ourselves on bringing you the very freshest of hacks. But that doesn’t mean we catch all the good stuff the first time around, and occasionally we get a tip on an older project that really should have been covered the first time around. This remarkable circuit sculpture clock is a perfect example of one that almost got away.

[Gislain Benoit] creation is called “The Tower” for good reason: it’s built inside what amounts to a giant glass test tube. Inverted and adorned with MDF discs, the Pyrex tube stands 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, and is absolutely stuffed with electronic goodness. There are more than 2,100 discrete components mounted inside on a helical framework of carefully bent wires, forming a vertical sculpture that displays the time on three separate pairs of seven-segment displays. All the diode-transitor logic circuits are built from discrete components; nary a chip was used, and to spice things up, [Gislain] used LEDs in place of regular diodes everywhere in the circuit. The result is a constant light show as the clock goes through its paces.

The whole thing looks amazing, and even the power supply at the base works in the overall presentation. The design is a bit of a departure from [Gislain]’s previous circuit sculpture clock, but it’s just as beautiful, and equally as mind-boggling in terms of construction difficulty.

Thanks to [Maarten] for the belated tip on this one.

Not Your Average Nixie Tube Clock

November 9, 2021 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

When it comes to Nixie clocks, we all pretty much know what to expect: a bunch of Nixies with some RGB LEDs underneath, a wooden case of some sort, and maybe some brass gears or fittings for that authentic steampunk look. It’s not that we don’t appreciate these builds, but the convergent designs can be a little much sometimes. Thankfully, this 60-tube Nixie clock bears that mold, and in a big way.

The key to [limpkin]’s design is the IN-9 Nixie, which is the long, skinny tube that used to show up as linear indicators; think bar graph displays on bench multimeters or the VU meters on mixing boards. [limpkin] realized that 60 on the tubes could be arranged radially to represent hours or minutes, and potentially so much more. The length of the segment that lights up in the IN-9 is controlled by the current through the tube, so [limpkin] designed a simple driver for each segment that takes a PWM signal as its input. The job of a 60-channel, 14-bit PWM controller fell to an FPGA. An ESP8266 — all the rage five years ago when he started the project — took care of timekeeping and control, as well as driving a more traditional clock display of four 7-segment LEDs in the center of the clock face.

The custom PCB lives in a CNC-machined MDF wood face; the IN-9s shine through slots in the face, while the seven-segment display shows through a thinned area. It looks pretty cool, and there are a lot of display options, like the audio spectrograph shown in the video below. We’re glad [limpkin] decided to share this one after all this time.

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Pomodoro timer helps you focus on tasks without burning out.

World’s Cutest Pomodoro Timer Is Also A Clock

October 29, 2021 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Student and hacker [prusteen] recently fell in love with the Pomodoro method of time management. That’s where you concentrate on your task for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break, and repeat this four times with a longer break at the end. Initially, [prusteen] was keeping track on their phone, but hated having to change the timer value between Pomodoros and break times. In order to keep the flow mode engaged, [prusteen] came up with this darling little study buddy that does it all with the push of a button.

By default, this tomato shows the current time, which we think is a handy and often-overlooked feature of Pomodoro timer builds. Press that momentary switch on the front, and it starts counting upward to 25 minutes. Then it beeps in stereo through a pair of buzzers when the time is up, and automatically starts a five-minute break timer. Press it again and the display goes back to clock mode, although judging by the code, doing this will cancel the timer.

Inside the juicy enclosure is an Arduino Nano, an RTC, and a 7-segment display. We love the attention to detail here, from the little green leaves on top to the anatomically-correct dimple on the underside. And we always like to see lids that snap on with magnets. So satisfying. Check out the brief demo after the break, which unfortunately does not include any lid-snapping action.

Do you need more interaction with your Pomodoro timer? Build yourself a pomo-dachi instead.

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Oscilloscope Clocks: Now In Color!

October 28, 2021 by Adam Zeloof 5 Comments

Ordinarily, when we hear the words “clock” and “oscilloscope” in the same sentence we conjure images of measuring a stable, repeating square wave that acts as the heartbeat of a system. Of course, that’s not the only meaning– there’s a much more fun and less useful one: using an oscilloscope to display the time.

That’s what [Wolfgang Friedrich] set out to do when he cobbled some protoboard, probes, and an FPGA into the Multi Color Oscilloscope Clock. Each digit on the clock is treated like a seven-segment display, made up of three horizontal bars and four vertical bars. The horizontal bars are generated by constant voltage at different levels, and the vertical bars are generated by quickly switching between two voltages. [Wolfgang] decided to use an R-2R resistor ladder DAC to create the appropriate analog signals from the FPGA’s digital outputs. For bonus points, each set of digits (hours, minutes, and seconds) are output concurrently through separate channels, so they can be displayed in different colors on the screen of his four-channel scope (the fourth channel is used for the points between numbers).

Misusing oscilloscopes in the name of fun has become a time-honored tradition– from Tennis for Two back in 1958 (which later became the beloved Pong) to the plethora of analog o-scope clocks we’ve seen, it’s clear that hackers just can’t get enough of the unique vector display style that a scope can provide. We love [Wolfgang]’s idea of using the scope’s channels to create a multi-color display, and we’re left wondering what kind of wacky waveforms we’ll be seeing next.

Halloween-Themed Talking Clock Relies On Pi Pico

October 27, 2021 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Many of us learn to read clocks at a young age, however, talking clocks eliminate the need to do that entirely. [Alberto] whipped up one of his own, in this case designed with some Halloween holiday spookiness.

A basic clock movement is used to display the time in the typical fashion. However, the movement also features a built-in trigger signal, which it sends to an attached microcontroller on the hour, every hour. The build relies on the Raspberry Pi Pico for sound, chosen for its USB programming interface and its 2 MB of onboard flash storage. Sound is stored in simple 16-bit WAV files, and played out to a speaker via a PWM output. Alternatively, a CircuitPython version of the code is available that uses MP3s instead. A light sensor is used to avoid triggering any sounds at night time that could disturb one’s sleep. The entire circuit can be built on a single-sided board. [Alberto] etched one at home in the old-fashioned way, though one could also order one online, too.

Halloween is an excellent time for hacks, and this year we have the Halloween Hackfest contest to show them off. It’s ending soon though, you have until the stroke of midnight Pacific time on Friday (that’s the moment Thursday night ends) to enter your Halloween-themed hacks.

Talking clocks have been around for some time, but are nevertheless a fun and educational project to build. We’ve seen some other great Halloween hacks lately, too. If you’ve been busy with projects this fall holiday, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

A tiny bedside clock that's packed with features.

ESP32 Clock Takes Time To Give Weather Info, Too

October 27, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

It’s fall in the northern hemisphere, so [Mike Rankin]’s kids are back in school and have returned to consulting him every morning about the weather and what they should wear. Since he’s no meteorologist, [Mike] built a beautifully dim and diminutive clock that does all the work for him, plus much more. It glows a lovely dark orange that’s perfect for the nightstand and those early morning interrogations.

In default mode, this clock displays the time, CO2 level, room temperature, and humidity in that eye-friendly orange. But wave your hand in front of the time of flight sensor, and it goes external, displaying the low and high temperatures for the day, plus the weather conditions forecast. After a few seconds of that, it goes back to default mode. The ESP fetches the time from an NTP server, then gets the weather from the OpenWeather API. The indoor weather comes from a combination sensor on the board.

Inside this tiny package is a beautifully-spun board with an ESP32 Pico D4 for a brain. In addition to the climate sensors there is a combination CO2/TVOC sensor (that’s total volatile organic compounds) to sniff out danger. There is also a pair of push buttons on the back and an ambient light sensor, but [Mike] isn’t using those just yet. Add in the Qwiic connector for future doo-dads, and you have quite the little gadget. Although the pictures make it look kind of big, you can see exactly how small it is in the demo video after the break.

[Mike] seems to like things tiny, and we admire that in a big way. Check out his positively Lilliputian ESP32 dev board.

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Mesmerizing Mechanical Seven-Segment Display

October 25, 2021 by Adam Zeloof 14 Comments

Seven-segment displays are ubiquitous. From where I’m writing this, I can see several without even having to swivel my chair. We’re all familiar with their classic visage; slightly italicized numbers that are brought to life by LEDs. There are a boatload of variants available– you can get displays with a decimal point, ones with multiple numbers, and even versions in just about any color you desire, but at the core they’re all basically the same thing- an array of LEDs sitting behind a faceplate. Except for those ones that have some gears inside.

Wait, what?

You read that right– a seven-segment display that contains gears, along with a handful of cams for good measure. Artist [Kango Suzuki] created this stunning all-mechanical seven-segment display that sequentially counts up from zero to nine when a thumbwheel is spun. All of the components are cut from wood and mesh together beautifully, complete with a satisfying click when the display rolls into a new digit, which you can hear in the video at the above link. You may recognize [Kango]’s style from this incredible mechanical clock he made a few years back. Unlike his earlier work, the seven-segment display is tiny, relatively speaking. Maybe we’ll see it integrated into a larger project some day, like a mechanical-digital clock.

We just love when somebody uses intricate mechanisms to artfully emulate some piece of existing tech. This isn’t even the first time we’ve seen a mechanical seven-segment display; [Peter Lehnér] built one back in 2019, and judging by [Kango]’s twitter feed, it appears to have inspired his design. There have even been a few other 3D printed ones over the years, but as far as we know this is the first wooden one– and, in true [Kango] fashion, its beautiful.

Thanks to [J. Peterson] for the tip!

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