[Audin] got a hold of a pressure gauge and decided to turn it into a clock. We were under the impression that these types of gauges were filled with oil but he didn’t detail cleaning it up for his purposes. Once he gained access to the guts he replaced them with a stepper motor. The motor connects to an Arduino with the help of a Darlington array for handling the large load. [Audin’s] plans include using a real time clock (on order) and moving to an AVR ATmega8 microprocessor once the prototyping is finished. In the mean time, he has posted the code used in his current prototype.
Stay with us past the page break for some video of this in action. He’s got the needle dialed in for very precise movement and has coded a “jitter” effect as well. We’re not sure this would be the most convenient clock, but we’d love to affix it to our kitchen stove for a gnarly looking timer. [Audin] acquired the gauge at his local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, a place we’ve used many times to source reclaimed and unused items of all kinds for our projects.
