clock

651 Articles

Nixie Tube Clock Isn’t Just A Clock

September 19, 2015 by 17 Comments

With everything that’s been happening in the news lately, [Jarek] decided it was finally time to finish up his latest project. The Internet of Things has been exploding with projects lately, and this clock that also alerts him of the weather is the latest addition. Plus it has the added bonus of using everybody’s favorite display: nixie tubes!

Of course, using high voltage for the nixies can be terror-inducing, but [Jarek] found a power supply on eBay that was able to power the tubes for not too much money. The controller is an HV5622 which can control up to 32 nixies while only using up three pins on a microcontroller which is pretty handy if you have a limited number of output pins.

The clock also has another device hidden behind all of the wires for the tubes: an ESP8266 to give it network connectivity. The clock connects to the Internet and searches for the nine-hour weather forecast. There are a few nixie lights behind the display which illuminate cutouts in the case to indicate a few different weather statuses. It’s a very polished project, and since it’s enclosed in a nice case it’s not likely to be mistaken for any movie props. Of course, other nixie projects don’t have the same comforting look.

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Homebrew Mini-Chumby Blends 3D Printing, ESP8266 And A Touchscreen

September 11, 2015 by 5 Comments

We were all despondent when our Chumby’s went dead. And plans to hack at least one of them died when the device quit powering on. [Spiros Papadimitriou] must have missed his too because he’s made a good start at making his own wireless, touchscreen, smart clock.

In all honesty, it isn’t much of a Chumby replacement yet. It has a clock and can control some devices. There’s some hooks to add a weather display that isn’t finished yet. Still, it is a working first step. Of course, anyone can take a Raspberry Pi (or similar), a Wifi dongle, and a touchscreen and do the same thing, right? Maybe, but it is a lot harder to make one you (or your significant other) wants on your nightstand. [Spiros] took a lot of time to design a beautiful 3D printed case.

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clock

Ferrofluid Clock Is A Work Of Art

August 18, 2015 by 58 Comments

It is not usually too difficult to separate functionality from art. Consider a clock. It’s a machine that has a clear and distinct function. It provides information. Nothing could be more different from a clock on a wall than a piece of artwork.  A painting, for instance has no clear function and provides no information. It’s just…art. It’s nice to look at. If we were to ask you to build a functioning, information providing clock that is also a piece of artwork, you would surely have your hands full. Where would you even start? If your name was [Zelf Koelma], you’d grab a bottle of ferrofluid and build us a beautiful, almost mesmerizing clock.

clock_01There’s little to no information on the details of how the clock works other than the use of ferrofluid. But it’s not hard to guess that it uses dozens of electromagnets and an Arduino. You can even pick one up for a cool $8,300 if you’re lucky enough to get a spot on the list, as he’s only making 24 of them.

Want to make one of your own? Pick up some ferrofluid and keep us updated. We’d love to hear from you in the comments on how you’d implement a build like this one. We had a fun time hearing your ideas when we covered the clock made of clocks.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Clock For Alternate Timebases

July 10, 2015 by 15 Comments

There is a strange clock in the waiting room of Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. While this clock keeps accurate time overall, the ticks and tocks are out of sync, occasionally missing a tick altogether. The net effect is one of turning one’s brain into a sort of porridge.

Yes, a Vetinari Clock has made its way into The Hackaday Prize. This isn’t a clock that’s random yet accurate over long time spans; this is a complete replacement for run-of-the-mill clock movements you can find at any craft store.

In addition to the Vetinari Clock, [Nick Sayer]’s Crazy Clock can be programmed as a sidereal clock (3m 56s fast per day), a Martian clock (39m 36s slow per day), and a tidal clock (50m 28s slow per day), as well as some ‘novelty’ modes that still have 86400 ticks per day ranging from subtle to ‘clown car’ levels of craziness.

[Nick] is gunning for the ‘best product’ category for the Hackaday Prize, and for that he’s designing a board to be a direct replacement for the board in a Quartex Q80 clock movement. With this new board, [Nick] can replace the electronics in this movement in just a few minutes. Being built around an ATtiny45 means it’s infinitely hackable. A clock with this movement would be a great product, although judging from the video below, not one we would want to be around all day.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

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Instrument Cluster Clock Gets The Show On The Road

July 3, 2015 by 24 Comments

While driving around one day, [Esko] noticed that the numbers and dials on a speedometer would be a pretty great medium for a clock build. This was his first project using a microcontroller, and with no time to lose he got his hands on the instrument cluster from a Fiat and used it to make a very unique timepiece.

The instrument cluster he chose was from a diesel Fiat Stilo, which [Esko] chose because the tachometer on the diesel version suited his timekeeping needs almost exactly. The speedometer measures almost all the way to 240 kph which works well for a 24-hour clock too. With the major part sourced, he found an Arduino clone and hit the road (figuratively speaking). A major focus of this project was getting the CAN bus signals sorted out. It helped that the Arduino clone he found had this functionality built-in (and ended up being cheaper than a real Arduino and shield) but he still had quite a bit of difficulty figuring out all of the signals.

In the end he got everything working, using a built-in servo motor in the cluster to make a “ticking” sound for seconds, and using the fuel gauge to keep track of the minutes. [Esko] also donated it to a local car museum when he finished so that others can enjoy this unique timepiece. Be sure to check out the video below to see this clock in action, and if you’re looking for other uses for instrument clusters that you might have lying around, be sure to check out this cluster used for video games.

The mechanics in dashboards are awesome, and produced at scale. That’s why our own [Adam Fabio] is able to get a hold of that type of hardware for his Analog Gauge Stepper kit. He simply adds a 3D printed needle, and a PCB to make interfacing easy.

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Swollen Clock Build Demostrates All Engineering Shoulds

June 26, 2015 by 19 Comments

[Steve Gardner] wants an accurate clock for his bench. Of course the only option most engineers will accept for something like this a clock they’ve built themselves. In fact, this is his second time around as his first was an OLED based system using one of those sweet Maxim TCXO’s that keep time for years with negligible drift.

This build is going to be dead accurate as well since he plans to roll in a GPS source. But for now he’s covering the display build itself and will use another clock source IC at first. The display is a set of six 2.3″ 7-segment displays on protoboard. Bonus points for all the tidiness in his point to point soldering!

You may think this is a super simple project, and in a way it is. But [Steve] does an amazing job of dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s in a way that is beneficial to learn for all of your prototyping. For instance, he’s combining some 7-segment displays with 5mm LEDs as the colons. He mentions checking the peak wavelength of the displays to match the LEDs when choosing components. The design is also well-planned on graph paper. This may be just for use in illustrating the video but is a great practice in your own prototyping.

We’re not sure if there’s some movie magic involved here as his first burning of code to the PIC microcontroller results in a fully working device — impressive. Looking at his entire presentation, if you follow the workflow that [Steve] uses in his engineering, you’re doing it right!

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PiClock

PiClock – Time And Weather Information Overload

June 10, 2015 by 48 Comments

[Kevin] wanted a display where he could take a quick glance and get all the current environmental information he uses throughout the day. That information includes, of course, the time and date as well as weather information. We’re not just talking the current weather information but the forecast for the upcoming week as well as a map showing current weather patterns. To do this, [Kevin] came up with a unique system he’s calling the PiClock.

[Kevin] did some serious programming to get this clock project off of the ground. The weather data comes via the Weather Underground API and the map data from the Google Maps API. The main program is written in Python and will run on any OS running Python 2.7+ and PyQt4. If you’re interested in doing something similar, check out the source at github.

From the project’s name, it is no surprise that a Raspberry Pi is the brains here. A USB WiFi adapter allows access to the internet but an Ethernet connection would do just fine. Having the RaspPi hanging out with wires everywhere would be a little lazy, so [Kevin] opened up his 19″ LCD monitor and mounted the RaspPi inside the case. He tapped 5vdc off of the monitors power supply and used that to power the RaspPi, no external wall wart necessary! And if the PiClock’s background isn’t cool enough, some RGB LED strips were mounted to the back of the monitor to give an Ambilight effect.