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654 Articles

Building An Analog Meter Watch

May 23, 2026 by 14 Comments

Most conventional analog watches have two or three hands, covering hours, minutes, and seconds (where present). [Sahko] has built a different kind of analog watch that creatively displays the time with just one. 

The build is based around a simple analog coil meter, which, at its heart, just sweeps its needle across a scale based on the voltage input to the device. A Raspberry Pi Pico is employed to drive the meter through a digital-to-analog converter. Pressing the buttons on the outside of the device tells the watch to display hours, minutes/seconds, or the current month or day of the week. With a single needle, only one parameter can be displayed at a time, but that’s just a compromise you accept for having a cool unique analog dial watch.

Another cool touch in the design is that the dial backer isn’t just a printed piece of paper—it’s a custom PCB, which has a much nicer, hardier finish. The case of the watch is also CNC milled out of aluminum and bead blasted for a quality surface finish, adding a nice industrial touch to the build.

This is a great example of a custom watch with quality fit and finish. The attention to detail really pays off in terms of feel. We’ve seen other watch projects use similar construction techniques before, too.

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Voltmeter Clock Has The Time Dialled In

May 18, 2026 by 30 Comments

You could make a clock with three hands spinning about nested central shafts. If you did that, we probably wouldn’t publish it on Hackaday unless you really found a way to make it interesting. Make a clock out of voltmeters, however, and that usually catches our eye. [lcamtuf] has done just that.

The heart of the build is an AVR128DB28 microcontroller, an 8-bit microcontroller that is still currently in production. It runs at 8MHz, and drives a series of three Baomain 65C5 voltmeters to display hours, minutes, and seconds. Each has a custom printed face with the correct number of 13 or 61 divisions as needed. The voltmeters are driven by a continuous stream of 1-bit pulses with a software-controlled duty cycle determining exactly how far the needle moves. Yes, it’s using simple pulse width modulation, coded by hand by [lcamtuf] to do the job. All the components are wrapped up in a beautiful wooden case, with delicately kerf-bent panels to create the attractive curved lines.

We’ve featured similar builds before, too. As it turns out, hackers just really love clocks and old-school dials. Video after the break, which is worth watching for the rollover behaviour alone.

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Salvaged VFDs In Nixie-Like Clock

May 16, 2026 by 4 Comments

In between the Nixie tube era of the 50s and 60s and the advent of multi-digit vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs) common in 80s and 90s consumer technology, there was a brief time in the early 70s where single-digit VFDs were commonplace. Superficially these devices look like Nixie tubes, but have a number of advantages to them including lower voltage, lower power requirements, and lower cost. [maurycyz] recently found a number of these salvaged from old calculators and used them to build a retro-themed clock.

[maurycyz] was not able to find datasheets for this display, but was able to reverse-engineer each of the digits. Similar to vacuum tubes there is a heater which has a few ohms of resistance, and from there each of the segments of the digit can be deduced by probing the 13 signal wires. These are analog devices in some respects, so a lot of experimentation had to go into driving the displays to find their optimal conditions. A quartz crystal was used for timekeeping with an AVR128DA28 microcontroller chosen to provide control for the digits, using seven pins as segment drivers and four as grid drivers. Each digit uses around 0.14 watts, so with all four digits on it can consume a little over half a watt. A simple wood enclosure rounds out the build.

As Nixie supply wears thin, VFDs like this can be an excellent stopgap or replacement while still building retro-themed displays like this clock or this calculator which uses similar VFDs for each digit.

LED Matrix Clock Proudly Shows Its Inner Wiring

March 31, 2026 by 25 Comments

Some projects take great care to tuck away wire hookups, but not [Roberto Alsina]’s Reloj V2 clock. This desktop clock makes a point of exposing all components and wiring as part of its aesthetic. There are no hidden elements, everything that makes it work is open to view. Well, almost.

The exception is the four MAX7219 LED matrices whose faces are hidden behind a featureless red panel, and for good reason. As soon as the clock powers up, the LEDs shine through the thin red plastic in a clean glow that complements the rest of the clock nicely.

[Roberto]’s first version was a unit that worked similarly, but sealed everything away in a wedge-shaped enclosure that was just a little too sterile, featureless, and ugly for his liking. Hence this new version that takes the opposite approach. Clocks have long showcased their inner workings, and electronic clocks — like this circuit-sculpture design — are no exception.

The only components, besides the Raspberry Pi Zero W and the LED matrices, are the 3D-printed enclosure with a few hex screws and double-sided tape. Design files and code (including the FreeCAD project file) are available should you want to put your own spin on [Roberto]’s design.

Momentus Clock Aims To Find Meaning

March 26, 2026 by 8 Comments

A lot of the time, we must assign our own meaning to the numbers on the clock. 8:30 AM is work kicking off, 12 PM is lunch, and 5PM is when the corporate chains release us to what’s left of the day. If you’d rather the clock tell you what’s special about the current time, though, you might like this project from [Andy Isaacson].

It’s called Momentous—”a clock to make every minute meaningful” in [Andy’s] own words. The concept is simple—for each minute, the clock digs up some random mathematical fact relevant to the current time. For example, you might think of 3:14 as Pi o’clock, but Momentous also notes that the sequence “314” shows up at the 856th decimal of e. Useful? Probably not. Fun? If you like numbers, then very!

[Andy] wrote Momentous in Typescript with React Native and Expo. Baked into the app is a computed list of fun number facts for every conceivable time from 00:00 to 23:59. All these timely numbers were processed through a “fact generation” algorithm to dig up mathly tidbits. Do they contain primes? Do the numbers show up in a famous irrational number sequence? Are they palindromic, or can some neat facts be gleaned from Wikipedia? Maybe the current time shows up in your best friend’s phone number! Momentous uses all these and more to make every minute of the day a little bit more interesting.

You can check out the clock for yourself in your web browser. Alternatively, you can install it on your iPhone if you so desire. We feature all kinds of fun clocks here, from the wordy to the absurdy. If you’re cooking up your own timely hacks, we always love to to hear about them on the tipsline!

3D Printed Clock Just Taps It In

March 21, 2026 by 4 Comments

The famous cuckoo clock, with its moving, chirping mechanical bird indicating various divisions of time, has been around since at least the 1600s. The most famous of them come from the Black Forest area of Germany, and are still being made worldwide even today. Other clocks with different themes take their inspiration from the standard bird-based clocks from history, and thanks to modern 3D printing and other technologies we can make clocks with almost any type of hour indicator we’d like with relative ease like [Jason]’s golf clock.

While the timekeeping mechanism is a fairly standard analog clock, the hour indicator mechanism in this build is a small figure which putts a golf ball into a hole once every hour. It uses an ESP32-C3 at its core, which controls a pair of servos. One controls the miniature golfer, and the other lifts the ball up into position on the green at the appointed time. Once the ball is in place, the figure rotates, striking the ball towards the hole. Although it looks almost like the ball is guided by a magnet of some sort at first glance, the ball naturally finds its way into the hole by the topography of the green alone.

Almost all of the parts in this build are 3D printed, including the green, the golfer, the frame, and a number of the servo components. There’s also a small sensor that detects if the ball has actually made it into the hole and back to the lifting mechanism, and to that end there’s also a number of configurations that can be made in the software to ensure that the servos controlling everything all work together to putt the ball properly.

While not a cuckoo clock in the strict sense, we always appreciate a unique clock around here, but if you demand your clocks have ideological purity we’ll point you to this cuckoo clock built into a wristwatch.

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Every Ham Shack Needs A Ham Clock

March 16, 2026 by 11 Comments

Every ham radio shack needs a clock; ideally one with operator-friendly features like multiple time zones and more. [cburns42] found that most solutions relied too much on an internet connection for his liking, so in true hacker fashion he decided to make his own: the operator-oriented Ham Clock CYD.

A tabbed interface goes well with the touchscreen LCD.

The Ham Clock CYD is so named for being based on the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD), an economical ESP32-based color touchscreen LCD which provides most of the core functionality. The only extra hardware is a BME280 temperature and humidity sensor, and a battery-backed DS3231 RTC module, ensuring that accurate time is kept even when the device is otherwise powered off.

It displays a load of useful operator-oriented data on the touchscreen LCD, and even has a web-based configuration page for ease of use. While the Ham Clock is a standalone device that does not depend on internet access in order to function, it does have the ability to make the most of it if available. When it has internet access over the built-in WiFi, the display incorporates specialized amateur radio data including N0NBH solar forecasts and calculated VHF/HF band conditions alongside standard meteorological data.

The CYD, sensor, and RTC are very affordable pieces of hardware which makes this clock an extremely economical build. Check out the GitHub repository for everything you’ll need to make your own, and maybe even put your own spin on it with a custom enclosure. On the other hand, if you prefer your radio-themed clocks more on the minimalist side, this Morse code clock might be right up your alley.