Some folks simply wish to have their cake and eat it too, however only a few of us ever get to tug it off. [Erich Styger] has, although with V5 of his “MetaMetaClock”— a clock product of clocks, that makes use of the orientation of the palms to create digits.
We’ve seen earlier variations of this clock. As earlier than, the construct is exquisitely detailed and all related information are on GitHub. This model retains the acrylic light-pipe palms of model 4, however provides extra of them: 60 clocks vs 24. Bigger PCBs are used, grouping the dual-shaft steppers into teams of 4, as an alternative of the person PCBs used earlier than. Every PCB has an NXP LPC845 (a Cortex M0 microcontroller) that communicates on an RS-485 bus. Inserting 4 steppers per microcontroller reduces elements rely considerably in comparison with earlier variations (which had every ‘clock’ by itself modular PCB) albeit at the price of some flexibility.
Whereas the final model used veneers on its face, this model is lower by CNC by from a big slab of oak. It’s definitely essentially the most enticing model but, and whereas greater isn’t all the time higher, extra clock faces means extra potential results. Date? Time? Block letters? Arbitrary textual content? Kaleidoscopic colors from the RGB LEDs? It’s all there, and because it’s open supply, anybody who builds one can add extra choices. A BLE interface makes it fast and straightforward to wirelessly change between them or set the time.
It’s good typically to look at tasks like this enhance incrementally over time. [Erich] mentions that he plans so as to add Wifi and a web-based person interface for the subsequent model. We sit up for it, and are grateful to [jicasi] for the tip. Simply as it’s all the time clock time at Hackaday, so you possibly can all the time toss a tip of your personal into the field.
