clock

644 Articles

Prototyping The Bulbdial Clock

August 28, 2010 by 1 Comment

Evil Mad Scientist posted a story about what went into developing the Bulbdial clock. We think the Bulbdial is one of the best pieces of kit out there for many reasons; using colored shadows for each hand is a brilliant idea, the design is clever and uses a low parts count, and the concentric rings that make it work also add to the aesthetic. But after seeing the original wood prototype it had crossed our minds that developing those circular PCBs isn’t the easiest thing to pull off. To save on board cost, the first run didn’t have the center routed out, but rather used almost-touching holes drilled during manufacture and finished by hand during assembly. They also go on to discuss the use of Charlieplexing to reduce part count and the search for a suitable diffuser for the clock face.

MSP430 Based Single LED Clock

August 11, 2010 by 62 Comments

[Kenneth Finnegan’s] latest clock makes use of the TI Launchpad for programming and debugging MSP430 microprocessors. We took a look at the Launchpad when it was released and we’re glad to see some hacks resulting from availability of that tool. The clock reads out the time using a bi-color LED. Press the button and a series of flashes will tell you the time. A three-position toggle switch is used along with the push button for setting the time. The protocol he developed is outlined in his demo video after the break.

We like [Kenneth’s] use of a plastic electrical box as a project box. They’re cheap and you can find them everywhere in many different sizes. He mentions the difficulty in drilling through the faceplate. We’ve had our share of shattered plastic trying to drill holes in the darn things. If you’ve got some tips on faceplate-modification we’d love to hear them.

This clock is sure the polar opposite from the TTL clock that [Kenneth] showed us back in March, trading jumper wires for lines of code. We’re going to give this one a try, hopefully fixing the button debounce along the way.

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Most Useless Machine Loses Carbon Footprint

June 16, 2010 by 23 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyQ3PFbK9Y]

[Clayton Boyer] took the electricity out of the useless machine, making one that runs like a clock. To this point, we’ve always seen these useless machine use electric motors. [Clayton’s] clever design uses a wind-up spring and a series of wooden gears to bring the fun, making it a great companion for the binary adder you built. The video above shows the inner workings and the design plans are for sale. We’d love to print out the parts or perhaps just laser-cut them from wood like the legs of this spider bot.

[Thanks llwynog]

Talking Clock Sounds Just Like You

May 23, 2010 by 18 Comments

[vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/10852914]

We’d bet a large portion of our readers don’t remember when you could call the phone company and get the time of day. Gadget Gangster is bringing back the tried and true method with this talking clock. Just press the button and the ‘operator’ will read the time of day to you. Record your own voice and place the WAV files on an SD card, from there a Propeller chip takes care of the rest.

As a side note, we’re big fans of the method used to breadboard the power supply using the TO-220 package leads as their own jumpers. We’ve always been partial to using a breadboard regulator on a PCB but this method is simple and takes almost no space at all.

DPAC Put Your Alarm Clock To Shame

May 1, 2010 by 16 Comments

DPAC, the Dynamically Programmable Alarm Clock, goes far beyond what you would expect an alarm clock to do, yet we find all of its features useful. You can see there are four buttons at the bottom that control the menu scrolling. The second from the left currently reads “Sync”, a feature that the clock uses every 10 minutes but can be forced manually. This will check your Google Calendar, schedule an alarm for the next event while factoring in driving distance, traffic, and weather conditions. It’s got an audio system for radio and iPod operation, but also includes some home automation options. Using the X10 communication protocol it can turn on lights, start the coffee maker, and open the blinds as part of a gentle wake-up cycle. All of this is configurable through the clock itself, or via the web interface. The prototyping was done on an Arduino but the final version uses an AVR ATmega324 along with a Roving Networks RN-134 WiFi module (datasheet) for connectivity. Check out the demonstration video that [Eric Gaertner] and his fellow developers filmed after the break.

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Using A/C Frequency As A Clock Signal

April 30, 2010 by 31 Comments

A while back we saw a logic clock that used the alternating current frequency from the power grid to keep time. We asked for information on your projects that use this method and we got a lot of comments and tips. Today we’re sharing [Doug Jackson’s] method which he used in his word clock.

The schematic above is from that project and we’ve outlined the important part in green. [Doug] pulls a signal from the 9V AC power before it hits the bridge rectifier, using a 100K resistor and a zener diode to protect the microcontroller pin. The code for that project comes as a hex file but he sent us the C code pertaining to this timing circuit. It’s written for PIC but you’ll have no trouble adapting it to other microcontroller families. Take a look after the break.

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