Plexitube Owl Clock Watches You Sleep

April 24, 2016 by James Hobson 17 Comments

Wait, plexitube? Is that a typo? Surely we mean Nixie tubes!

For a Christmas project [Kurt] wanted to build some owl-inspired clocks — with bit of a retro feel. Given the complexities of finding and using actual Nixie tubes, he went with an alternative — a Plexitube.

lightguidescloseup — Closeup of Plexitube

Plexitubes look like futuristic Nixie tubes. They can have different stylized numbers. They’re crisp, they’re bright, and they are completely customizable. They’re made of edgelit acrylic! By laser etching the design onto pieces of acrylic and feeding LED light into the edge, very much like how a light-pipe works, it’s possible to have a neon-light effect — using nothing more than plastic and some LEDs.

He designed custom PCBs for the project, with SMD LEDs for the plexitubes. Making use of a laser cutter, he designed the actual owl to be made out of lightly formed wood cutouts — the entire thing looks absolutely fantastic.

As far as “Nixie tube” clocks this has gotta be one of the most aesthetically pleasing ones we’ve seen in a while, but if you’re looking for an all-out-Nixietube-extravaganza… take a look at this whopping thirteen tube clock.

[Thanks for the tip Lawrence!]

Gear Clock Uses Stepper Motor

April 24, 2016 by Al Williams 11 Comments

[Rjeuch] liked a wooden clock he saw on the Internet, but the gears were produced with a proprietary software tool. So he built his own version. Unlike the original, however, he chose to use a stepper motor to drive the hands.

The clock’s gears aren’t just for show, and the post does a good job explaining how the gears work, how you might customize them, and how they fit together. The clock’s electronics rely on an Arduino.

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Nixie Timer Is Easy To Read Across The Kitchen

April 22, 2016 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Nixie clocks. Nixie power meters. Nixie thermometers, speedometers, and even Nixies for personal adornment. Is there anything that hasn’t been Nixie-fied? How about a Nixie kitchen timer? Beyond the Nixie tube, this is a great build. Check out the video below the break.

As so often happens with Nixie aficionados, [Kouichi Kuroi] started with tubes and searched for a project to use them on. A wonky kitchen timer provided the thinly veiled excuse for the build – after all, anyone can drop a couple of yen on a commercial replacement, right? The timer features four IN-12 tubes and a large numeric keypad up front on a laser-cut acrylic case. For those who quibble with the keypad’s aesthetics and the wisdom of a Nixie project in the kitchen environment, [Ko] points out that an IP65 keypad would have more than doubled the price of the build, and a little common sense goes a long way to keeping the high-voltage side from meeting anything wet. In addition to countdown capability, the timer can also act as a stopwatch and display the time of day, and the Nixie tubes provide great visibility compared to seven-segment LCD timers.

As for the aforementioned Nixie projects, here’s a clock, power meter, thermometer, speedometer and necklace that we’ve featured before. What’s next for Nixies? We don’t know, but we’re keen to see what you come up with.

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E-paper Tide Clock Easy To Mistake For Art Print On The Wall

April 12, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 23 Comments

[Stephen B.] kickstarted a MicroPython board. When he got it, he was pleasantly surprised to find that it worked great. His jaded soul balmed with a good experience, he found himself armed with a tool in search of a project. Then he remembered something that had stuck with him, which was a tide clock.

He lives 70 miles from the sea, but his stepmother had a birthday coming up. She went swimming daily, so he had his excuse to build. Unlike his inspiration project, a bunch of seven segment LEDs would not be received well by a technically disinclined stepmother with a well decorated home. So, instead of those, he went with an epaper display. It looks great.

He wanted to use the Kindle display to save money, but the weird power levels needed scared him off. He spent a bit more on a module, but it was probably worth it in time savings. Micropython board, an RTC, a battery, and e-paper display in hand, he had everything needed to build the clock but aesthetics.

Luckily a local frame shop entertained him by letting him pick up frames until he could find one that fit. He put a nice shoreline print together, installed the devices into the frame, and ended up with a really good looking clock. Sure it only tells time four times a day, but that’s enough if you live a life by the sea.

Neopixel Bedroom Clock Uses ESP8266

April 9, 2016 by Jenny List 5 Comments

When [Vance] joined his local hackspace he sought a project to take advantage of the new tools at his disposal. His solution: an attractive LED colour wheel clock using neopixels driven by an NTP-synchronised ESP8266. Each neopixel illuminates a segment of the clock face through frosted diffuser, the hours are tracked as a red light, the minutes blue, and the seconds green. As each color passes another they are mixed, creating a changing colorscape. 12 neopixels are used, and the whole clock is mounted in a laser cut enclosure.

After an initial prototype on a piece of stripboard he created a PCB in KiCad, complete with space for a 3.3v regulator. This and the source code can be found on the project’s GitHub repository.

The resulting clock is a very high quality build as well as being attractive and useful in its own right. The video shows the color mixing in action, or at least the cyan and yellow products of it. Continue reading “Neopixel Bedroom Clock Uses ESP8266” →

Metal Magic: Heat Bluing Steel Clock Hands

March 23, 2016 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

Metalwork of any kind is fascinating stuff to watch. When the metalwork in question is in service of the clockmaker’s art, the ballgame changes completely. Tiny screws and precision gears are created with benchtop lathes and milling machines, and techniques for treating metals border on alchemy – like heat-bluing of steel clock hands for a custom-built clock.

If you have even a passing interest in metalwork and haven’t followed [Clickspring]’s YouTube channel, you don’t know what you’re missing. [Chris] has been documenting a museum-quality open-body clock build, and the amount of metalworking skill on display is amazing. In his latest video, he covers how he heat-blues steel to achieve a wonderful contrast to the brass and steel workings. The process is simple in principle but difficult in practice – as steel is heated, a thin layer of oxides forms on the surface, enough to differentially refract the light and cause a color change. The higher the heat, the thicker the layer, and the bluer the color. [Chris] uses a custom-built tray filled with brass shavings to even out the heat of a propane torch, but even then it took several tries to get the color just right. As a bonus, [Chris] gives us a primer on heat-treating the steel hands – the boric acid and methylated spirits bath, propane torch flame job and oil bath quenching all seems like something out of a wizard’s workshop.

We’ve covered [Chris]’ build before, and we encourage everyone to tune in and watch what it means to be a craftsman. We only hope that when he finally finishes this clock he starts another project right away.

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This Hourglass Flips Itself

February 27, 2016 by Kristina Panos 37 Comments

Once upon a time, [Mike] bought an hourglass for his sister. He intended to build it into a clock and give it to her as a gift, but life and other projects got in the way. Fast forward a couple of decades to the point when it all came together and [Mike] had everything he needed on hand to build a beautiful wooden clock that automatically flips the hourglass over.

Every 60 minutes, the bulb, which is situated inside a handcrafted maple ring, rotates 180 degrees to restart the flow of sand. Whatever number is at the top of the outer wheel denotes the current hour. The digit for the next hour is always at the five o’clock position relative to the current hour. This works out because the pockets on the outside of the bulb’s ring share a 5:6 ratio with the gear teeth on the outer ring. Confused? Watch the time-lapse video from [Mike]’s that shows it in action.

[Mike] was determined to build this clock using only things he already had on hand, like a cheap digital watch to keep time and a car window motor to rotate the hourglass. He hacked a USB port into the watch so he could use the hourly chime function to trigger the motor through a quad op-amp. The motor runs until it is triggered to shut off optically—a pair of slits cut into the gear that moves the hourglass pass over a sensor. [Mike] built a beautiful box to hold the guts from a nice piece of walnut and spared no detail in the design.

There are a ton of build pictures on the projects site and an in-depth video tour of the clock, which is embedded after the break. Whether they are designed to amaze or confuse, we love a good clock build around here. If you’re into hourglasses, we featured a digital version not too long ago.

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