clock hacks

945 Articles

3D-Printed Clock Tells Time With Gears

December 1, 2014 by 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.

Micro Word Clock

November 29, 2014 by 45 Comments

A word clock – a clock that tells time with words, not dials or numbers – is one of those builds that’s on every Arduino neophyte’s ‘To Build’ list. It’s a bit more complex than blinking a LED, but an easily attainable goal that’s really only listening to a real time clock and turning a few LEDs on and off in the right pattern.

One of the biggest hurdles facing anyone building a word clock is the construction of the LED matrix; each LED or word needs to be in its own light-proof box. There is another option, and it’s something we’ve never seen before: you can just buy 8×8 LED matrices, so why not make a word clock out of that? That’s what [Daniel] did, and the finished project is just crying out to be made into a word watch.

[Daniel]’s word clock only uses eight discrete components: an ATMega328p, a DS1307 real time clock, some passives, and an 8×8 LED matrix. A transparency sheet with printed letters fits over the LED matrix forming the words, and the entire device isn’t much thicker than the LED matrix itself.

All the files to replicate this build can be found on [Daniel]’s webpage, with links to the Arduino code, the EAGLE board files, and link to buy the board on OSH Park.

Jaw-Dropping Atomic Clock Build

November 27, 2014 by 44 Comments

You could cruise the Internet bazaars for a talking clock but you’ll never find one as awesome as this. Just look at it… even if it didn’t work it would be awesome.

[Art] certainly lives up to his username. His Rubidium-standard atomic real-time clock is surely an example of hardware art. The substrate is a collection of point-to-point soldered perfboard modules. Each laid out meticulously. What does such layout call for? A gorgeous enclosure which doesn’t obscure your view of the components. For this he went with a copper tube frame and a custom fabricated aluminum chassis pan.

For the circuit itself [Art] tells us he wanted to build something akin to the old HP nixie frequency counters so he went with logic chips. The pictures and a few video annotations are the only clues we have for how this works. Hopefully your encouragement in the comments will help prompt him to share more about that.

Oh, and the talking clock part that we referred to earlier? Every minute you get a readout of the time thanks to a PIC playing back audio using [Roman Black’s] BTc sound compression algorithm.

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Chicken-powered Pendulum

November 24, 2014 by 17 Comments

Every once in a while we get sent a link that’s so cute that we just have to post it. For instance: this video from [Ludic Science]. It’s a wind-up chicken toy that kicks a pendulum back and forth. No more, no less.

But before you start screaming “NOT A HACK!” in the comments below, think for a second about what’s going on here. The bird has a spring inside, and a toothed wheel that is jammed and released by the movement of the bird’s foot (an escapement mechanism). This makes the whole apparatus very similar to a real pendulum clock.

Heck, the chick toy itself is pretty cool. It’s nose-heavy, so that under normal conditions it would tip forward. But when it’s wound up, tipping forward triggers the escapement and makes it hop, tipping it backward in the process and resetting the trigger. The top-heavy chicken is an inverted pendulum!

And have a look, if you will indulge, at the very nice low-tech way he creates the pivot: a bent piece of wire, run through a short aluminum tube, held in place by a couple of beads. Surely other pivots are lower-friction, but the advantage of using a rod and sleeve like this is that the pendulum motion is constrained to a plane so that it never misses the chicken’s feet.

Our only regret is that he misses (by that much) the obvious reference to a “naked chick” at the end of the video.

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The guts of a Z80 MicroTV Clock

A Z80 Micro TV Clock

November 14, 2014 by 8 Comments

As an adventure in computer history, [Len] built up a clock. The Z80 Micro TV Clock brings together a homebrew computer and three Micro TVs into a rather large timepiece.

The computer powering the clock runs the CP/M operating system. This OS was eventually released as open source software, and a variety of homebrew computer projects have implemented it. This clock is based on an existing breadboard CP/M machine, which includes schematics and software.

With an OS running, [Len] got a text editor and C compiler working. Now custom software could be written for the device. Software was written to interact with a Maxim DS12885 Real Time Clock, which keeps the time, and to output the time to the display controllers.

The Micro TVs in this build are Sony Watchman displays featuring a 2″ CRT. The devices had no video input port, so [Len] ripped them open and started poking around. The NTSC signal was found by probing the board and looking for the right waveform.

To drive the TVs from CP/M, a custom video driver was built. This uses three relatively modern ATmega328P microcontrollers and the arduino-tvout library. All of these components are brought together on a stand made from wood and copper tubing, making it a functional as a desk top clock

Star Gate Clock

Star Gate LED Clock Has Plenty Of Pizazz

October 26, 2014 by 8 Comments

[David Hopkins] has finally finished off his Star Gate LED clock over on Hackaday.io and it looks fantastic.

We originally featured his progress with the project in Hacklet 18 – Tick Tock, it’s Time for Clocks, and we’re happy to say it’s finally complete. The clock features 60 WS2812 LEDs to simulate the Star Gate’s chevrons — and to tell the time. Under the hood is an RTC, an Arduino Nano, an LDR and even an hourly ‘chime’. Did we mention it also automatically dims at night?

What we’re almost more impressed with is the build quality, which [David] doesn’t actually mention how he did it — regardless, it looks great! Stick around after the break to see a video of it in action, so you can really appreciate the clock’s capabilities.

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VFD Wristwatch

The ChronodeVFD Wristwatch

October 26, 2014 by 47 Comments

Not just another steampunk fashion statement, [Johngineer’s] ChronodeVFD wristwatch is as intricate as it is beautiful. Sure, we’ve seen our share of VFD builds (and if you want a crash course in vacuum fluorescent displays, check out Fran’s video from earlier this year) but we seldom see them as portable timepieces, much less ones this striking.

The ChronodeVFD uses a IVL2-7/5 display tube, which in addition to being small and low-current is also flat rather than rounded, and features a transparent backing. [Johngineer] made a custom board based around an AtMega88 and a Maxim DS3231 RTC (real time clock): the latter he admits is a bit expensive, but no one complains about left-overs that simplify your design.

The VFD runs off a Maxim MAX6920 12-bit shift register and is powered by a single alkaline AA battery. A rechargable NiMH would have been preferable, but the lower nominal voltage meant lower efficiency for his boost converters and less current for the VFD. [Johngineer] won’t get much more than 6-10 hours of life, but ultimately the ChronodeVFD is a costume piece not meant for daily wear. Swing by his blog for a number of high-res photos and further details on how he built the brass tubing “roll cage” enclosure as well as the mounts for the leather strap.