Pac-Man Clock Eats Time, Not Pellets

February 5, 2015 by Rick Osgood 21 Comments

[Bob’s] Pac-Man clock is sure to appeal to the retro geek inside of us all. With a tiny display for the time, it’s clear that this project is more about the art piece than it is about keeping the time. Pac-Man periodically opens and closes his mouth at random intervals. The EL wire adds a nice glowing touch as well.

The project runs off of a Teensy 2.0. It’s a small and inexpensive microcontroller that’s compatible with Arduino. The Teensy uses an external real-time clock module to keep accurate time. It also connects to a seven segment display board via Serial. This kept the wiring simple and made the display easy to mount. The last major component is the servo. It’s just a standard servo, mounted to a customized 3D printed mounting bracket. When the servo rotates in one direction the mouth opens, and visa versa. The frame is also outlined with blue EL wire, giving that classic Pac-Man look a little something extra.

The physical clock itself is made almost entirely from wood. [Bob] is clearly a skilled wood worker as evidenced in the build video below. The Pac-Man and ghosts are all cut on a scroll saw, although [Bob] mentions that he would have 3D printed them if his printer was large enough. Many of the components are hot glued together. The electronics are also hot glued in place. This is often a convenient mounting solution because it’s relatively strong but only semi-permanent.

[Bob] mentions that he can’t have the EL wire and the servo running at the same time. If he tries this, the Teensy ends up “running haywire” after a few minutes. He’s looking for suggestions, so if you have one be sure to leave a comment. Continue reading “Pac-Man Clock Eats Time, Not Pellets” →

When Handmade Circuits Become Art

January 24, 2015 by James Hobson 61 Comments

This mind boggling piece of art took hundreds of hours to make over a period of three years. The entire structure is composed of thousands of components, all of which are part of the clocks circuit. They call it, The Clock.

Each component was hand soldered in this ridiculously complex 3D structure. They have a typical artist statement, but you know what — for once it’s actually pretty intuitive.

“The Clock” has digital pulses flowing inside every single wire and every single part. These synchronized pulses, all intelligently controlled and channeled through every circuit, is a binary “dance” of hundreds of bits of information coming and going from one section to another. All working in unison to display the flow of time.

The clock works by taking in mains voltage and counting the frequency of pulses — in North America it’s 60Hz — conveniently a unit divisible for time. However if you were to take this clock elsewhere, perhaps where AC cycles at only 50Hz — the clock’s not going to keep accurate time.

It has no buttons — but you can change the time using a “Time Adjusting Magnet” over certain areas of the clock which feature micro electro-magnetic switches. The whole thing weighs about 14 pounds and consists of 1,916 individual components! Wow.

This has gotta be up there with some of our favorite clock builds we’ve ever seen on Hack a Day, perhaps with it only being second to this home-made Atomic Clock!

[Thanks Arthur!]

Flexible Numitron Tube Clock Build

January 15, 2015 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

Hackers and makers alike often use whatever’s readily available. Sometimes this is done out of necessity, other times because of the desire to make something work without waiting for parts to ship or some store to open. And many times, we use what we already have simply because it presents a challenge. A couple of years ago, [Alan] made a beautiful clock that combines the lessons he learned from building a word clock with the challenges presented by some IV-9 and IV-16 Numitron tubes he acquired.

This build expanded [Alan]’s horizons while extending the use of his existing tools. The timekeeping is done with a word clock board he had designed previously that can utilize any of three kinds of RTC modules. Further flexibility is evident in the top board, which is designed with double footprints to accommodate through-hole or SMD shift registers and resistors. His current board iteration allows for chaining if you like your time displays long and specific. If the vintage ~~blue~~ reddish-orange glow of ~~VFDs~~ Numitron tubes offends your eyes for some reason, there’s a dual-footprint for a single-color LED under each tube.

It’s worth mentioning that these are not Nixie tubes, they are ~~vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD)s~~ Numitron tubes. If you already have or plan to acquire some but don’t know how to drive them, check out this Numitron tutorial we covered a few years back.

Edit: D’oh. As you have pointed out, these are Numitron tubes, not VFDs or Nixies. That is what multitasking will get you. We applaud your vigilance.

Clockety Uses Phone Flash For Projection Clock

January 15, 2015 by Mike Szczys 100 Comments

[Gaurav Taneja] was showing off his projection clock add-on for iPhone called Clockety at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. The concept is pretty neat, a clip-on clock which uses the iPhone flash LED as the light source. It may sound a little gimmicky until you see the functionality of the accompanying app which is shown off in the video after the break. Once clipped onto the phone, you lay it face down on your night stand and a gentle tap on the furniture will turn the projection on or off. This is a killer feature when you’re staying some place without an illuminated bedside clock.

Continue reading “Clockety Uses Phone Flash For Projection Clock” →

Small, Detailed Nixie Clock Build

December 31, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

Nixie tubes, while built during the vacuum tube era of the mid-20th century, still exist in a niche among hackers. It’s quite the task to get them up and running due to a number of quirks, so getting an entire clock to work with Nixie tubes is a badge of honor for those who attempt the project. For anyone thinking about trying, [Tomasz] has written an extremely detailed write-up of his Nixie clock which should be able to help.

There is a lot of in-depth theory behind Nixie tubes on [Tomasz]’s page that he covers in the course of describing his clock. As far as the actual project is concerned, this is a simplified design which uses one board for the entire clock, including circuits for the lamps, drivers, microcontroller, power supply, and DC/DC conversion. This accomplishes his goal of making this project as small as possible. The Nixies he chose were IN-12 which are popular in his Eastern European home, but could be sourced from eBay and shipped anywhere in the world.

There is a lot of documentation on the project site, including schematics, microcontroller code, PCB design, and even screenshots of the oscilloscope for various points in the circuit. While this might not be the simplest Nixie clock ever, it is certainly close, more easily readable, and the most detailed build we’ve seen in a while!

What Is The Matrix…Clock?

December 29, 2014 by Marsh 18 Comments

We’re surprised we haven’t seen this kind of clock before, or maybe we have, but forgot about it in the dark filing cabinets of our minds. The above picture of [danjhamer’s] Matrix Clock doesn’t quite do it justice, because this is a clock that doesn’t just tick away and idly update the minutes/hours.

Instead, a familiar Matrix-esque rain animation swoops in from above, exchanging old numbers for new. For the most part, the build is what you would expect: a 16×8 LED Matrix display driven by a TLC5920 LED driver, with an Arduino that uses a DS1307 RTC (real-time clock) with a coin cell battery to keep track of time when not powered through USB. [danjhamer] has also created a 3D-printed enclosure as well as added a piezo speaker to allow the clock to chime off customizable musical alarms.

You can find schematics and other details on his Hackaday.io project page, but first, swing down below the jump to see more of the clock’s simple but awesome animations.

Continue reading “What Is The Matrix…Clock?” →

3D-Printed Clock Tells Time With Gears

December 1, 2014 by Ethan Zonca 52 Comments

[ekaggrat] designed a 3d-printed clock that’s fairly simple to make and looks awesome. The clock features a series of 3d-printed gears, all driven by a single stepper motor that [ekaggrat] found in surplus.

The clock’s controller is based around an ATtiny2313 programmed with the Arduino IDE. The ATtiny controls a Darlington driver IC which is used to run the stepper motor. The ATtiny drives the stepper motor forward every minute, which moves both the hour and minute hands through the 3d-printed gears. The hour and minute are indicated by two orange posts inside the large gears.

[ekaggrat] etched his own PCB for the microcontroller and stepper driver, making the build nice and compact. If you want to build your own, [ekaggrat] posted all of his design files on GitHub. All you need is a PCB (or breadboard), a few components, and a bit of time on a 3D printer to make your own clock.