Split-Flap Clock Flutters Its Way To Displaying Time Without Numbers

November 5, 2024 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

Here’s a design for a split-flap clock that doesn’t do it the usual way. Instead of the flaps showing numbers , Klapklok has a bit more in common with flip-dot displays.

It’s an art piece that uses custom-made split-flaps which flutter away to update the display as time passes. An array of vertically-mounted flaps creates a sort of low-res display, emulating an analog clock. These are no ordinary actuators, either. The visual contrast and cleanliness of the mechanism is fantastic, and the sound they make is less of a chatter and more of a whisper.

The sound the flaps create and the sight of the high-contrast flaps in motion are intended to be a relaxing and calming way to connect with the concept of time passing. There’s some interactivity built in as well, as the Klapklok also allows one to simply draw on it wirelessly with via a mobile phone.

Klapklok has a total of 69 elements which are all handmade. We imagine there was really no other way to get exactly what the designer had in mind; something many of us can relate to.

Split-flap mechanisms are wonderful for a number of reasons, and if you’re considering making your own be sure to check out this easy and modular DIY reference design before you go about re-inventing the wheel. On the other hand, if you do wish to get clever about actuators maybe check out this flexible PCB that is also its own actuator.

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Oscillator Needs Fine-Tuning

November 3, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 26 Comments

Since their invention more than a century ago, crystal oscillators have been foundational to electronic design. They allow for precise timekeeping for the clocks in computers as well as on our wrists, and can do it extremely accurately and inexpensively to boot. They aren’t without their downsides though; a quartz watch might lose or gain a few seconds a month due to variations in temperature and other non-ideal environmental situations, but for working in the world of high-frequency circuits this error is unacceptable. For that you might reach for something like an oven oscillator, a circuit with a temperature controlled chamber able to keep incredibly precise time.

[IMSAI Guy] found this 10 MHz oven oscillator on a site selling bulk electronics at bargain basement prices. But as is unsurprising for anyone who’s used a site like this to get cheap circuits, it didn’t quite hit its advertised frequency of 10.000000 MHz. The circuit design is capable of this amount of accuracy and precision, though, thanks to some cleverly-designed voltage dividers and filtering. One of those voltage dividers allows a potentiometer to control a very narrow range of output frequencies, and from the factory it was outputting between 9.999981 and 9.9999996 MHz. To get it to actually output a 10 MHz wave with eight significant digits of accuracy, a pull-up resistor on the voltage divider needed to be swapped out.

While this was a fairly simple fix, one might wonder how an off-the-shelf component like this would miss the mark in such an obvious way but still go into production. But that’s one of life’s great mysteries and also the fun of sourcing components like this. In this case, the oven oscillator was less than $10. But these circuits aren’t always as good of a deal as they seem.

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Geochron: Another Time, Another Timeless Tale

October 26, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 10 Comments

The Geochron World Time Indicator is a clock that doubles as a live map of where the sun is shining on the Earth. Back in its day, it was a cult piece that some have dubbed the “Rolex on the wall.” Wired’s recent coverage of the clock reminded us of just how cool it is on the inside. And to dig in, we like [Attoparsec]’s restoration project on his own mid-1980s Geochron, lovingly fixing up a clock he picked up online.

[Attoparsec]’s recent restoration shares insights into the clock’s fascinating mechanics. Using a synchronous motor, transparent slides, and a lighted platen, the Geochron works like a glorified slide projector, displaying the analemma—a figure-eight pattern that tracks the sun’s position over the year.

But if you’re looking for a digital version, way back in 2011 we showcased [Justin]’s LED hack of FlorinC’s “Wise Clock”, which ingeniously emulated the Geochron’s day-night pattern using RGB LEDs, swapping out the faceplate for a world map printed on vellum. That’s probably a much more reasonable way to go these days. Why haven’t we seen more remakes of these?

The 1983 Clock Four Decades In The Making

October 21, 2024 by Al Williams 13 Comments

In 1983, a 14-year-old [Will] saw an LED clock in The Sharper Image store. At $250, it stayed in the store. That was a lot of money back then, especially for most teenagers. But [Will] didn’t forget. After high school, he and a friend planned to build one from scratch. They worked out how they would do it and did a little prototyping, but never really finished. Well, they never really finished at the time. Because 33 years later, [Will] decided to finally put it together. Check it out in the video below.

[Will’s] learned a lot since his original design, plus we have tech today that would have seemed like magic in the late 1980s. But he wanted to stay true to the original design, so there’s no microcontroller or smart LEDs. Just binary counters and a lot of LEDs. There’s even a 555 doing duty as a reset timer.

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Recreating A Popular Faux-Nixie Clock

September 13, 2024 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

There’s a good chance you’ve seen “Nixie clocks” on the Internet that replace the classic cold cathode tubes with similarly sized LCD panels. The hook is that the LCDs can show pictures and animations of Nixie tubes — or pretty much anything else for that matter — to recreate the look of the real thing, while being far cheaper and easier to produce. It’s a hack for sure, and that’s the way we like it.

[Trung Tran] liked the idea, but didn’t just want to buy a turn-key clock. So he’s decided to build his own version based on the ESP32-S3. The WiFi-enabled microcontroller syncs up to the latest time via NTP, then uses a PCF8563 real-time clock (RTC) module to keep from drifting too far off the mark. The six displays, which plug into the custom PCB backplane, can then show the appropriate digits for the time. Since they’re showing image files, you can use any sort of font or style you wish. Or you could show something else entirely — the demo video below shows off each panel running the Matrix “digital rain” effect.

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Globe-Shaped World Clock Is A 3D-Printed Mechanical Marvel

August 12, 2024 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

Time zones are a complicated but necessary evil. Humans like the numbers on the clock to vaguely match up with what the sun is doing in the sky outside. To that end, different places in the world keep different time. If you want to keep track of them in a very pretty fashion, you might consider building a fancy and beautiful World Clock like [Karikuri] did.

The design is based around a globe motif, mimicking the world itself. Only, on the surface of the globe, there are clock faces instead of individual countries. Each clock runs to its own time, directed by a complicated assemblage of 3D-printed gears. Mechanical drive is sent to the globe from a power base, which itself carries a mechanical seven-segment display. This too can display the time for different regions by using the controls below. It’s also useful for setting the clock to the correct time.

It’s a little difficult to follow the build if you don’t speak Japanese. However, quality subtitles are available in English if you choose to enable them.

We’ve seen [Karikuri’s] work before. We’ve also featured a great many world clocks over the years, including this particularly beautiful example that tracks night and day. Just don’t expect it to keep track of moon time. Video after the break.

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A Lenticular Clock Spells Out The Hours

July 24, 2024 by Jenny List 1 Comment

So many are the clock projects which cross the Hackaday threshold, that it’s very rare indeed to see something that hasn’t already been done. We think we’ve not seen a lenticular clock before though, and we’re thus impressed by this one produced by [Moritz Sivers].

You may well be familiar with lenticular images from toys and novelties, an animation is sliced into lines and placed behind an array of multi-faceted linear lenses. It gives the effect of movement as from different viewing angles a different frame of the animation is perceived. In this clock the animation is replaced by the clock digits, and by rotating the whole with a servo driven by an ESP8266 microcontroller it can display different digits to the viewer. The write-up and the video below are of value both for the clock itself and the description of how these animations are produced. The clock itself doesn’t sacrifice usability for all its novelty, and we can see this technique might find a place in other projects requiring custom displays.

The lenticular lenses used here are off the shelf, but if you are of an adventurous mind, you could try printing some of your own.

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