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Dave sent in his binary clock he turned in to an old hard drive, he writes -
In about April of 2004 I started this binary clock project which was inspired by the Think Geek binary clock. I put the project on hold a number of times and finally finished it around October of 2003. When I started the project the TG clock was only available with red LEDs, and while it was definitely pretty cool, there were a number of things about it that bothered me. Obviously it needed blue LEDs, which are all the rage for the modern appliances. It also displays the time in 6 binary registers, one each for the 6 decimal digits of a digital clock. While this arrangement generates some pretty gnarly patterns, and is probably why it was chosen, it seemed very un-geekish to me. Lastly, and most importantly, since one of the guys I work with already had a red TG binary clock on his desk, if I was to have one, it couldn't be the same design, and it would have to somehow out-geek that other clock.DIY Binary clock project - Link.Clearly I would have to create my own binary clock from scratch to meet my requirements. As the only 'crossover geek' in the office (programming and hobby-level digital electronics), I could meet the primary goal of out-geeking the existing clock with my own AVR microcontroller based design.
01010010 01100101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00111010:
Binary Clock - Link.
DIY Binary clock - Link.
HOW TO - Make an analog binary clock - Link.
HOW TO - Build a binary clock - Link.
HOW TO - Build a Binary LED Clock - Link.
Binary LED clock - Link.
Hey, The TG clock actually can display "real" binary, but it's non-obvious how to turn it on and it wastes a couple LEDs.
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What the. Where'd my link go?
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In about April of 2004 I started this binary clock project which was inspired by the Think Geek binary clock. I put the project on hold a number of times and finally finished it around October of 2003.
Wow.. that is an amazing clock if it lets you go BACK IN TIME to finish it!
I Love the idea of using an old hard drive. I have one that died (head crash, ouch) last August. That's one way to keep all that sensitive data!
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that is an amazing clock if it lets you go BACK IN TIME to finish it!
Heh, oops. Corrected, thanks.
I really want to do one that uses the original mechanical parts of the drive. What I'm thinking of doing for the next one is etching the platter with a sort of polar coordinate grid indicating hours on one axis and minutes on the other. On the head assembly I'd put a pointer of some sort. The electronics would then slowly drive the spindle motor and position the voice coil to indicate the time on the grid (not sure how many poles the spindle has though, it might not divide down very nicely).
Feedback on the voice coil might be tricky, I'd probably cheat and hide an optical encoder under the platter.
For hourly chimes the head can be driven with an audio waveform from the controller. It's quiet, but you can easily play reasonable music with it (It'll run right from a standard audio amplifier).
I also have an old ST-225 with a stepper driven head that's begging to be turned into a clock of some sort.
Anyway, thanks for looking Makers!
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Turning a binary clock into a hard drive isn't bad either
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