Ikea Clock Gets Wanderlust

February 6, 2023 by Al Williams 29 Comments

We always enjoy unique clocks, and a recent 3D print from [David Kingsman] caught our eye. It converts an Ikea clock into a very unusual-looking “wandering hour” clock that uses a Geneva drive to show a very dynamic view of the current time. The concept is based on an earlier wandering clock, but [David] utilized a different mechanism.

To read the clock, you note which hour numeral is in range of the “minute arc” and read the time directly. So if the 12 hour is over the 20-minute mark, the time is 12:20. Besides the clock, you need a fair number of printed parts, although they all look like relatively simple prints. You’ll also need 13 bearings and some metric hardware. A piece of cardboard used for the face rounds out the build.

Modifying the clock is more than just taking it apart. There is a template file to print, and you’ll need to align it and drill holes as indicated.

If you haven’t seen a Geneva drive before, it translates a continuous rotation into intermittent rotation. This isn’t the first clock we’ve seen use this kind of drive, although the last one we saw represented time differently. If you want something even more mechanical, try a chain-driven clock.

The Times They Are A-Chaining

January 28, 2023 by Al Williams 6 Comments

If [Bob Dylan] had seen [Pgeschwi]’s bike chain clock, it might have influenced the famous song. The clock uses a stepper motor and a bike chain to create a clock that has a decidedly steampunk vibe. Despite the low-tech look, the build uses 3D printing and, of course, a bike chain.

The clock doesn’t just show the time. There is a contraption to show the day of the week, and a pendulum shows the current phase of the moon. The visible wiring is all old-school brass wire on the wood base. [Pgeschwi] is considering changing out all the 3D printed parts for brass ones, so this may be just an early prototype of the final product, but it still looks great.

The design used common tools, including Tinkercad and an online gear generation tool. There are a lot of details you wouldn’t suspect until you tried to build something like this yourself. For example, making the chain reliably go in both directions required a timing belt to synchronize the top gears. Getting the numbers on the chain to pass by the gears.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but there’s an LED under the 10-minute marks that shows the unit’s digits of the time. There are no markings for it yet, but in the picture, the time is actually 4:09.

We love unusual clocks, and we see plenty of them. From Fibonacci clocks to magnetic field line clocks, we love them all.

Knitting Clock Makes You A Scarf For Next Year

January 23, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 17 Comments

Time got a little wibbly wobbly during these pandemic years. Perhaps we would’ve had a more tangible connection to it if [Siren Elise Wilhelmsen]’s knitting clock had been in our living rooms.

Over the course of a year, [Wilhelmsen]’s clock can stitch a two meter scarf by performing a stitch every half hour. She says, “Time is an ever forward-moving force and I wanted to make a clock based on times true nature, more than the numbers we have attached to it.” Making the invisible visible isn’t always an easy feat, but seeing a clock grow a scarf is reminiscent of cartoon characters growing a beard to organically communicate the passage of time.

We’d love some more details about the knitting machine itself, but that seems like it wasn’t the focus of the project. A very small run of these along with a couple prototypes were built, with a knitting grandfather clock now occupying the lobby of The Thief hotel in Oslo.

If you’re looking for more knitting machines, checkout this Knitting Machine Rebuild or Knitting 3D Models Into Stuffies.

Continue reading “Knitting Clock Makes You A Scarf For Next Year” →

3D Printed Berlin Uhr Is An Attractive Germanic Clock

January 18, 2023 by Lewin Day 22 Comments

As much as Big Ben steals the spotlight when it comes to big public clocks, the Berlin Uhr is a much beloved digital communal timepiece. [RuudK5] developed their own 3D printed replica of this 1980s German icon.

The revision we see today is the [RuddK5]’s third attempt at replicating the Berlin Uhr. The clock features a design with four linear elements with a round light on top. The top light is responsible for blinking the seconds. The lowest line has four lights, each indicating one minute, while the next line has eleven lights, marking out five-minute intervals. Above that, the top two lines represent one hour and five hour blocks respectively. It’s a display unlike most other clocks out there, but when you learn it, it’s easy enough to use.

[RuddK5]’s replica relies on addressable LED strips to serve as the individual lighting elements. The strips are placed inside a 3D printed housing that is a scale replica of the real thing. Running the show is an ESP32 microcontroller, which is charged with getting accurate time updates from an NTP server.

Great design really does shine through, and this clock looks just as appealing at the small scale as it does lofted on a pole over the city of Berlin. If you prefer to read out the time in a simpler fashion though, we’ve featured plenty of clocks like that, as well!

Organic Fibonacci Clock Is All About The Spiral

January 12, 2023 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

Whether you’re a fan of compelling Tool songs, or merely appreciate mathematical beauty, you might be into the spirals defined by the Fibonacci sequence. [RuddK5] used the Fibonacci curve as the inspiration for this fun clock build.

The intention of the clock is not to display the exact time, but to give a more organic feel of time, via a rough representation of minutes and hours. A strip of addressable LEDs is charged with display duty. The description is vague, but it appears that the 24 LEDs light up over time to show the amount of the day that has already passed by. The LEDs are wound up in the shape of a Fibonacci spiral with the help of a 3D printed case, and is run via a Wemos D1 microcontroller board.

It’s a fun build, and one that we can imagine would scale beautifully into a larger wall-hanging clock design if so desired. It at once could display the time, without making it immediately obvious, gradually shifting the lighting display as the day goes on.

We’ve seen other clocks rely on the mathematics of Fibonacci before, too. If you’ve cooked up your own fun clock build, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Triple Zone Clock Tells Time In Style

January 6, 2023 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

Although the cutoff for saying ‘Happy New Year’ is somewhere around today, there’s still plenty of time to reminisce about 2022 and all that we accomplished. Hackaday alum [Jeremy Cook] spent much of last year designing and building a triple-zone PCB clock, dubbed the 742 clock. It is called so because of all the 7-segments, and then 42 from the height in millimeters of each PCB. Also because it’s 24 backwards, and if we may be so bold, because 42.

If this looks familiar, it’s because we covered the single-panel version a few months ago. Much like that one, the triple time zone clock is controlled by a single Wemos D1 mini, and the other two panels are chained to the primary board. This version has a frame made of 20/20 extrusion with nice 3D printed caps on the ends to finish off the look.

As with the single-panel clock, this one uses bared-FR4 PCBs to diffuse the LEDs, and the effect looks really nice. We particularly like the capacitive corners that control the clock and the colors, which change throughout the day when left to their own devices. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.

Are you really into LEDs? Consider building a Berlin clock.

Continue reading “Triple Zone Clock Tells Time In Style” →

Zen And Glowing Air Bubble Displays

January 4, 2023 by Elliot Williams 10 Comments

When you work in a medium for long enough, and you learn how it works more and more deeply, you eventually become its master. [Yukio Shinoda] is probably master of the LED bubble display.

She started out with an idea, back in 1994, of a column of water and an array of solenoids to inject air, making patterns in the bubbles. Time passed, and she began to realize these works, first in water and then switching over to glycerine for slower, more predictable, and more spherical bubbles. The latest version realizes her initial vision, after 29 years, with an 8×8 array of nozzles making 3D shapes in the slowly rising columns. Continue reading “Zen And Glowing Air Bubble Displays” →