clock hacks

924 Articles

Copper, Brass, Mahogany, And Glass Combine In Clock With A Vintage Look

June 28, 2017 by 18 Comments

No two words can turn off the average Hackaday reader faster than “Nixie” and “Steampunk.” But you’re not the average Hackaday reader, so if you’re interested in a lovely, handcrafted timepiece that melds modern electronics with vintage materials, read on. But just don’t think of it as a Nixie Steampunk clock.

No matter what you think of the Steampunk style, you have to admire the work that went into [Aeon Junophor]’s clock, as well as his sticktoitiveness –he started the timepiece in 2014 and only just finished it. We’d wager that a lot of that time was spent finding just the right materials. The body and legs are copper tube and some brass lamp parts, the dongles for the IN-12A Nixies are copper toilet tank parts and brass Edison bulb bases, and the base is a fine piece of mahogany. The whole thing has a nice George Pal’s Time Machine vibe to it, and the Instructables write-up is done in a pseudo-Victorian style that we find charming.

If you haven’t had enough of the Nixie Steampunk convergence yet, check out this Nixie solar power monitor, or this brass and Nixie clock. And don’t be bashful about sending us tips to builds in this genre — we don’t judge.

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Towards DIY Flip Digit Clocks

June 18, 2017 by 31 Comments

Seven segment displays and Nixies are one thing, but the king of all antique display technologies must be electromechanical flip dots. These displays, usually found in train stations or rarely on old bus lines, are an array of physical disks, black on one side, light on the other, that ‘flip’ back and forth with the help of an electromagnet. They’re expensive and impressive, driving them is a pain, but oh man do they look awesome.

While flip dot displays can be bought new if you know where to look, [sjm4306] had the idea to build his own out of inexpensive materials. It might just be a prototype, but we’re saying he’s succeeded. He has the workings of a seven flip-segment display, and the techniques he’s using mean it shouldn’t be too expensive to build your own.

Instead of building a matrix of flip dots, [sjm] is building a mechanical seven-segment display. Each of the segments are 3D printed in black PLA, and mounted to a piece of cardboard via a thin wire ‘axel’ going through the length of the segment. Where normal flip dots use an electromagnet to change each dot from one state to another, [sjm] mounted a very small vibrating pager motor to one end of the segment. When one half of a tact switch h-bridge is activated, the segment flips to the front. When the other half of the h-bridge is activated, the segment flips back.

Right now, this hardware is in the ‘extreme prototype’ stage, but results so far are encouraging. [sjm] has already designed a single-segment ‘module’. Plans for the electronics include optocouplers for two microcontroller pins for each segment and reed relays for each individual digit. For a four-digit display, these flip digits will only require 18 I/O pins.

You can check out [sjm4306]’s video for this project below. It’s a little bit long, but watch those things flip!

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New Take On The Binary Clock

June 15, 2017 by 10 Comments

By now it might seem like there’s no new way to build a binary clock. It’s one of the first projects many build to try out their first soldering irons, so it’s a well-traveled path. Every now and then, however, there’s a binary clock that takes a different approach, much like [Stephen]’s latest project which he calls the byte clock.

The clock works by dividing the 24-hour day into half and using an LED to represent this division, which coincidentally works out to representing AM or PM. The day is divided in half over and over again, with each division getting its own LED. In order to use this method to get one-second resolution it would need 16 LEDs, but since that much resolution isn’t too important for a general-use clock, [Stephen] reduced this to eight.

Additionally, since we’re in the Internet age, the clock has built-in WiFi courtesy of a small version of Python called WiPy which runs on its own microcontroller. A real-time clock rounds out the build and makes sure the clock is as accurate as possible. Of course an RTC might not have the accuracy as some other clocks, but for this application it certainly gets the job done.

TORLO Is A Beautiful 3D Printed Clock

June 8, 2017 by 26 Comments

What if you could build a clock that displays time in the usual analog format, but with the hands moving around the outside of the dial instead of rotating from a central point? This is the idea behind TORLO, a beautiful clock built from 3D printed parts.

The clock is the work of [ekaggrat singh kalsi], who wanted to build a clock using a self-oscillating motor. Initial experiments had some success, however [ekaggrat] encountered problems with the motors holding consistent time, and contacts wearing out. This is common in many electromechanical systems — mechanics who had to work with points ignition will not remember them fondly. After pushing on through several revisions, it was decided instead to switch to an ATtiny-controlled motor which was pulsed once every two seconds. This had the benefit of keeping accurate time as well as making it much easier to set the clock.

The stunning part of the clock, however, is the mechanical design. The smooth, sweeping form is very pleasing to the eye, and it’s combined with a beautiful two-tone colour scheme that makes the exposed gears and indicators pop against the white frame. The minute and hour hands form the most striking part of the design — the indicators are attached to a large ring gear that is turned by the gear train built into the frame. The video below the break shows the development process, but we’d love to see a close-up of how the gear train meshes with the large ring gears which are such an elegant part of the clock.

A great benefit of 3D printing is that it makes designing custom gear trains very accessible. We’ve seen other unconventional 3D printed clock builds before. 

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Antique Pinball Machine Lives As Clock

June 3, 2017 by 10 Comments

A big problem with restoring old arcade or pinball machines is finding original parts to get them running again. That’s part of the fun, though; when something finally works after weeks or months of effort. On the other hand, sometimes the only hope for old parts that will never be in a pinball machine again is for [Randy] to come across them. One of those parts he had lying around was a backglass for an old machine, and decided to turn it into a unique word clock.

The original pinball machine was built in 1956, and despite its age the backglass had almost no signs of wear or damage. There are 43 lights on this particular machine which is more than enough for 12 hours, minutes (by the 10s), seconds, and a few extras. An ATtiny85 serves as the controller and drives a fleet of Neopixels hidden in the display. There are also three buttons which control the brightness and allow the time to be set.

Be sure to check out the video below of this one-of-a-kind clock in action. A lot more went into this build as well including framing the glass, giving it a coat of paint and polish, and programming the clock into the microcontroller. Old backglasses from pinball machines seem to be relatively popular to repurpose into more conventional clocks, too, even clocks of an atomic nature.

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Disco Flashlight Binary Analog Clock?

May 30, 2017 by 2 Comments

As multitools have lots of different functions in one case, so [Shadwan’s] clock design incorporates a multitude of features. He started the design as a binary clock using a Fibonacci spiral for the shape. However, the finished clock has four modes. The original binary clock, an analog clock, a flashlight (all lights on), and a disco mode that strobes multiple lights.

[Shadwan] used Rhino to model the case and then produced it using a laser cutter. The brains are — small wonder — an Arduino. A 3D-printed bracket holds everything together. You can see the result in the video below.

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Digital Clock Goes With The Grain

May 29, 2017 by 28 Comments

This good-looking clock appears to be made out of a block of wood with LED digits floating underneath. In reality, it is a block of PLA plastic covered with wood veneer (well, [androkavo] calls it veneer, but we think it might just be a contact paper or vinyl with a wood pattern). It makes for a striking effect, and we can think of other projects that might make use of the technique, especially since the wood surface looks much more finished than the usual 3D-printed part.

You can see a video of the clock in operation below. The clock circuit itself is nothing exceptional. Just a MAX7218 LED driver and a display along with an STM32 ARM processor. The clock has a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, as well as a speaker for an alarm.

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