23 comments

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Nice! Needs just a tweak to prevent the overshoot and bounce when going from high to low.
This is gorgeous. I really need to hunker down and learn 3d modeling. It unlocks so many options from cnc to 3d printing.
I've had a lot of fun with onshape, it's free for public projects
Funny, I've been playing with panel-meters as well…

I have an analog computer I'm finishing up. I have ADC's to convert the analog to digital to display the values on an LCD (with an ESP32 dev board—it was more flexible than panel meters, cheaper than an oscilloscope).

But because looking at "simulated" panel-meters seemed to kind of undercut the point of the analog computer, I went ahead and created a small PCB to go from my analog computer to a panel meter like the one in the clock.

Running a "Spring + Mass" simulation on the analog computer and seeing both the LCD/ESP32 representation of a panel meter and an actual panel meter move in sync brought it all home.

So sexy! I could probably build the electronics easily enough, but such projects need workworking tools I just don't have room for in my tiny flat.

(nor would the missus be pleased for me to buy them - but that's another matter)

Cool! I was at least hoping for an op amp or two for the circuit however ;)
I expected seconds arrow to move much more smoothly than in the video

is 10Hz control just too slow?

I always enjoy projects like this. Both because the are artistically neat and because the give me all sorts of ideas.
This is beautiful, and I like it a lot, but I was slightly disappointed to find that they do not function by increasing the voltage as the day goes on. But then I remembered that that's how pins work. It IS measuring voltage!
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Very nice!

I skimmed TFA, came back here to ask for the obligatory 11:59:59 rollover, but then went back and found it.

The build itself is absolutely wonderful! This part is totally my hangup, but a second hand that has to reset bugs me to no end. :/
I built one of these recent after Princess Auto had an amazing deal on surplus meters like these. They were under just over 1$ each and I bought a lot of them.

The one I built isn't as nice, but it's a really nice way to display the time and people are mildly fascinated by it when they see it.

Random idea:

volts as Hours amps as Minutes

Resulting wattage drives an iridescent bulb

I suspect you meant "incandescent".

Iridescence essentially would mean it has a groovy, far-out metallic layer making rainbows on the surface. Not bad, but irrelevant.

PS: Neither of those would really communicate the needed information, except as an extreme (11:59 pm would look just like 10:27 pm, but very different from 12:01 am).

I saw somebody's arduino based voltmeter clock way back around 2014, I think here: https://maniacallabs.com/2014/07/08/meter-clock-pt1/

I thought it was pretty cool, but a bit expensive for what it was.

So I made my own with a PIC chip: https://www.n1kdo.com/meter-clock/index.html

Mine is more of a novelty than a accurate clock. It is a interesting desktop geegaw to invite discussion.

I love these analogue devices are being driven by a digital output. Using PWM is clever.
I like this! Now I want to build one, too.