Propeller Clock

[MrMikey83]

I have finally decided to tackle this project. If I finish it on time, it will be a grade for a 'personal' project for my microprocessor class.

I ordered $260 worth of parts from Digikey on the 13th and they are out for delivery today (15th)! Can't wait to get started on this.

I couldn't find my old thread (if I even made one) on this.

Anyway... Inspiration came from Henk Soubry's website...
**broken link removed**
...and I will tray and a make a few modifications to mine. Instead of using a computer fan as a motor, I want to go with something bigger. My professor at SIU said he used a motor from one of those full sized stand up fans. I dont want a little tiny clock so I'll probably use a larger moter as well.

For input and setting the clock, I have decided to use an old IBM 101 key keyboard. I found the list of hex codes for each key press and I will feed those into a PIC or ATmega processor and send via IR or RF signal.

Wish me luck!
~Mike

 

[John Sorensen]

I don't get the "mirror" part of that project. Is that some sort of semi-reflective glass? I'll look more later. I built something like this some time back. The real trick is to try to get power onto the rotor. There's lots of ideas, and apparently somepeople have been pretty successful. Batteries, a generator... I used slip rings, but they were always trouble as I have little mechanical skill. Also, if the rotor is not carefully balanced, well, I don't have to tell you what will happen :cry:

Suffice to say, the project was scrapped.

But it did look pretty cool, for a while.

j.

 

[jbeng]

I don't get the "mirror" part of that project. Is that some sort of semi-reflective glass?

I think the idea of the mirror is to make that which is displayed appear to be floating in the air. Of course, I could be wrong...
JB

 

[williB]

can yaall see the extra dot between 11 & 12 O'clock..
hmm wonder what that is for.. ?
very cool though..

 

[plot]

260$ in parts for that and it doesn't even include the motor, input devices, etc... ???

Did you order 26 ATmega's in case you messed up the first 25 or what? Or has Digikey's LEDs gotten really expensive? I'm so confused...



Good luck on the project though, I've seen someone do it in lab before with a computer fan and an AT8535.

 

[csaba911]

I did 2 in last year, one from a small fan and the second from a car radiator fan motor, the led's was 78cm from the shaft.
Be careful make sure mount every parts very carefully, check the balancing.
My last propeller clock was a disaster, I user a coil and magnet to transfer power to the board, like the generators.
The magnet seats on under the board mounted to the motor and the coil pas over as it rotate.
For some reason one of the capacitor aluminium can fall of the capacitor ! and smash in to my Laptop LCD, left a hole behind !!!
Good think not landed in my eyes!!

If you make something with large diameter count on the speed on the tip of your board, in high RPM, like 2000 RPM the speed on the outer part of your board where your led's mount may have 10's or 100km/h sped !!!

Good luck with your project.

STEVE

 

[jbeng]

can yaall see the extra dot between 11 & 12 O'clock..
hmm wonder what that is for.. ?

Looks like it might be a way to represent a sweep second hand. Take a look at this other guy's prop clock. **broken link removed**.
In his photo of his clock running in analog mode, he has a couple extra dots too. It looks to me like it might be intentional ... on this one anyway.
JB

 

[csaba911]

THE INDICATOR FOR THE SECOND !

 

[olly_k]

Surely 26$ not $260 :shock: Are you using a real planes propeller???
Anyway good luck mate and post an update here!

 

[williB]

can yaall see the extra dot between 11 & 12 O'clock..
hmm wonder what that is for.. ?

Looks like it might be a way to represent a sweep second hand. Take a look at this other guy's prop clock. **broken link removed**.
In his photo of his clock running in analog mode, he has a couple extra dots too. It looks to me like it might be intentional ... on this one anyway.
JB

ya i think thats what it is..

 

[MrMikey83]

No, its $260 but not all of it was for the clock. I bought a $70 Programmer and some other ELD's and processors for other projects.

...and yes, the extra dot is the second hand on Henks clock.
I think I will be using the motor from a standard upright stand fan. I'm also going to try the rotating transformer coil to transfer power.

~Mike

 

[Exo]

That's a nice looking clock :!:

But i expected nothing less, after all, it's made in Belgium

 

[John Sorensen]

Why not use the fan's motor and mount the LEDs on the blades? Now that's form and function!

Oh man that sounds so cool I think I'll do it!

j.

 

[Exo]

Why not use the fan's motor and mount the LEDs on the blades? Now that's form and function!

Oh man that sounds so cool I think I'll do it!

j.

Put led's on the fan on your computer's cpu, then let the fan display the actual temperature..
(c'mon casemodders, you've got a project now :lol: )

 

[MrMikey83]

lol, thats a good idea exo.

Well, I still dont have a motor yet, but I have been trying to map out my schematic. Hopefully I can find a place that will make my board for less than $120!

I have decided to build it so that every LED has its own input pin. I'm using an ATMEGA32 and will have about 30 LED's.
For my class project, I will just have the clock most likely, but in the future, I will program it to have (from outer to inner) several colors of LED for outer ring, a line of text, another set of colors, andother line of text, another set of colors, then the inner LED's for the clock hands.

SO in other words, two lines of text with the ability to change the color of the bordering and outer LED's.

Now, I just need to decide what color I want to put into this thing. The biggest decision will be what color to have the text because they will stay that color while the other LED colors will be selectable.

~Mike

 

[mechie]

Colour display ?

This may be beyond a school project but if you have red, green and blue LEDs for every position along the rotor it could be persuaded to show full colour images :?:

A low-resolution video display :?:

OK, straight jacket back on, I'll go quietly ...

 

[MrMikey83]

Trying to display full color images, while very cool, would be hard to incorperate. You'd need 3 output ports for each pixel of the display and using a large 40 pin ATMEGA32, would give you 11 pixels total.
The picture would also look strange as the top would be spread out and the bottom would be squashed together in the shape of a pie piece.

~Mike

 

[mechie]

A matter of geography

But MrMikey surely any image 'skew' would be a function of both the display geometry (flat propeller, vertical cylinder, whatever) and scan timing.

IF the controller was fast enough and smart enough it could produce a square image (to 'nearest pixel' accuracy) on a flat propeller scan system. I made no claims of challenging the resolution of a video monitor, only a suggestion for something a bit different from the 'prop clock' standard- as fascinating as these things are.

If a single (8 bit) port were fed into a decoder, it could select any ONE of 255 LEDs. If the display were 32 pixels high it could be done with 5 bits ? three colours (simultaneously) trebles this upto 15 bits? or if colours were sequential then 7 bits would do.
For the above the circuit would be scanning mechanically in one plane and electronically in the other - a single 8 bit port !

Fantasy or not :?:

 

[JohnBrown]

Fantasy or not

No, it's not entirely fantasy. I did some work for an company some years back who were building just such a unit, it was a cylindrical display, and there was no blue, just red, yellow and green, since at that time blue LEDs were either unavailable or way too expensive. However, IIRC, their design used a hardware approach, the image was stored in RAM and clocked out by a bunch of counters and latches.
I think that your idea about multiplexing electronically AND mechanically is almost pure fantasy, though, I can't believe that there would be enough brightness/persistence of vison to go round(excuse the pun).

 

[MrMikey83]

Hehe, very interesting ideas, but I think I'll just stick with my Propeller clock/Two-line-display gadget. (Assuming I can learn enough about C and the Atmel processor to get it working.)
~Mike