Cheap, silent electromechanical clock movement ideas

Neat displays.

I'm just curious why you'd want to use fans and springs.

If you were to use a stepper motor, you'd only need to power it to turn it.

These are low cost 64:1 geared steppers that will turn LARGE loads.

5V Stepper Motor

Cheers

Mark

And the cylinders are very light (optimized for low noise) so there's no need for powerful motors. Moreover this is intended to be used in less-than-10 production.

the cylinders are very light (optimized for low noise) so there's no need for powerful motors

I imagined they were.

I just wondered if you were adding to the mechanical issues, rather than a bit of wiring.

I was also wondering if the cyclinder could do a full turn so you don't need to reverse it.

A simple motor to spin it until a hall effect switch detects you are there and stops.

I can see the benefit for a power fail, but with the size and price of LiPo batteries, a reset to zero should be easy.

I've learnt over the years that sometimes it is better to look at different techniques and look at the potential issues some time later.

Generally mechanical items need lubrication or cleaning to remove gunk build-up.

COMPACT

Do you recall how your genuine ones were constructed.

The angled edge where the segments meet must have caused some issues.

Cheers

mark

the cylinders are very light (optimized for low noise) so there's no need for powerful motors

I imagined they were.

I just wondered if you were adding to the mechanical issues, rather than a bit of wiring.

I was also wondering if the cyclinder could do a full turn so you don't need to reverse it.

A simple motor to spin it until a hall effect switch detects you are there and stops.

I can see the benefit for a power fail, but with the size and price of LiPo batteries, a reset to zero should be easy.

I've learnt over the years that sometimes it is better to look at different techniques and look at the potential issues some time later.

Generally mechanical items need lubrication or cleaning to remove gunk build-up.

COMPACT

Do you recall how your genuine ones were constructed.

The angled edge where the segments meet must have caused some issues.

Cheers

mark

What I meant was using USB-to-serial connection to PC (with commands) as a way to set the time

I think the same bit still applies.

Both ends need to understand what is being sent and what to do with it.

The Aduino Serial connection first looks to see if the IDE wants to download, and if not then the sketch runs.

What you do with the serial port after that is up to the sketch.

Mark

Sorry for the confusion! What I meant was using USB-to-serial connection to PC (with commands) as a way to set the time.

Is using Serial connection for setting up the clock a viable solution (especially RTC time)

??

Serial is a connection that is made between two devices.

Depending on the protocol used, it should work, but obviously both ends need to understand what is sent/received and act accordingly.

There are serial communications examples in the IDE that you could experiment with, and then work out a way to use it for your purpose.

You may want to use Google to find how others set the RTC when fitted to an Arduino.

Mark

I tried to minimize the use of sensors and wires that take up the precious IO pins of Arduino board I will be using.

p.s. Is using Serial connection for setting up the clock a viable solution (especially RTC time)?