DIY ‘Meta Clock’ with 24 Analog Clocks | Hacker News Reader

DIY ‘Meta Clock’ with 24 Analog Clocks

mcuoneclipse.com

86 pointsanother18 comments

Dang. I want one of these on my wall!

But, I don't have the $$$ for the real ones [0], nor the knowhow to build one using the info in this post.

Maybe I'll try to get some time together to learn more about PCB design/hardware... or even try and turn this into a side project to try an open-source collab to make it a more complete kit/tutorial.

0 - https://clockclock.com/

The post is as close to an instructable as you can get without being tedious, and the author seems quite approachable. Give it a try, worst case you will learn a lot!

Yeah, but you need a 3d printer and an ultrasonic washing machine. And you'll need to buy a lot of other tools if you're not into electronics already.

No, you need access to those tools. Or access to somebody who has them or a makerspace near you.

Yes, that could be an option for some people.

The ultrasonic washing machine is only needed if you want to remove the flux from the board. You can do the same with flux removal and a teeht brush, but I think a ultrasonic machine is a much cooler way of cleaning :-)

There was an iOS version of this from a Swedish company called Chapel. It appears to be officially licensed from Humans Since 1982.

Unfortunately, the app company seems to be gone, so the app is no longer on the App Store (I still have it installed on my devices, though.)

But the originators are still around: https://www.humanssince1982.com/

I have read that, if you do the computation correctly, averaging 3 mechanical watches can give the accuracy of a quartz based watch.

An assertion with so many conditional assumptions that it's pragmatically meaningless.

I’ve always heard it as basic quorum before Raft was a thing. One clock and you never know if it’s right or wrong. Two clocks and you’re worse off than one in case they disagree. Three and at least you can (probabilistically, anyway) reach a rough consensus good to the deviation of the clocks not exceeding some threshold in comparison to the other two.

Why does it matter to reach strict consensus with a quorum of half plus one in the case of a continuous variable such as time of day? Wouldn't averaging work (regardless of the parity of the members)?

I think it's assuming you have no idea of the time and one of the clocks may be very wrong, like several hours off. So you'd have two clocks close to each other and one far off.

Yessir.

Source?

Curious how much power this clock uses, as stepper motors are known to be very power-hungry even in low-current mode.

The 48 stepper motors plus all the microcontroller circuit needs between 1.0 and 1.2 A (5V), or around 25 mA per motor, so not that much. I agree that stepper motors are usually power hungry, but these are small torque/low power motors designed for automotive dash boars. The power needed is more of a problem with powering on the whole system, as the condensators and circuit needs more current compared running the motors.

Can't you mask out the "unused" position by placing some material over the arms at a certain angle?

Yes, you can. Dieter Zech (mentioned in the article, check out his image gallery) did this for one of his earlier clocks. The downside is that with this the intermezzo animations don't look that cool and nice. If you just want to show the time: go for it. If you want to show nice animations, don't have a hide position. A third option would be to have a third hand to blank out the others, but mechanically this would mean a completely different stepper motor behind it.

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