Laser sundial

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By Gareth Branwyn
Posted 2009/03/21 @ 11:06 am
Category Arduino, Electronics

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, a nifty laser “sundial,” controlled by an ATtiny24 MCU and a servo:

An Atmel ATtiny24 microcontroller drives an R/C servo which in turn rotates a line LASER taken from a LASER level.

The microcontroller runs a software real time clock and turns the servo and the line LASER to mimic the shadow cast from the style of a sundial as the time goes.

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5 Responses to Laser sundial

morezane on March 21st, 2009 at 1:50 pm said:

love it love it love it

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celeriac on March 21st, 2009 at 1:58 pm said:

This is not a sundial. This is a clock. I wonder whether they know what the word “sun” means.

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- Anonymous on March 21st, 2009 at 2:11 pm said:
  
  I bet they do know what the word sun means. They are using a laser and some hackery to recreate it’s path indoors.
  
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  Dave Bell on March 21st, 2009 at 6:08 pm said:
  
  No, thy are not recreating the sun’s path indoors, unless I missed something unsaid in the write-up. The sun’s path is a complex two-sinusoidal function forced by the Earth’s orbital motion, not a straight-forward 24 equal hours clock.
  That certainly could be coded into the Arduino, though…
  
  For some real sundials, you might want to check out this huge collection of photos and info:
  http://StainedGlassSundials.com
  
  Dave
  
  Reply ↓
- Michael Fusion on March 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm said:
  
  you know, that’s why the word “sundial” is in quotes, it means that it is being taken out of the vernacular.
  
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