Googly eye clock

14 thoughts on “Googly eye clock”

1. Moritz says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 4:14 am

   Yes, it would be just as easy to remake this with a PIC and a few FETs. And a lot cheaper. Why is Make just sooo Arduino biased?

2. yachris says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 6:03 am

   Hey Moritz — so BUILD ONE ALREADY, using the tools and parts of your choice, PROVE TO US that it’s cheaper, and I’ll bet you $10 that Make: will post it on their blog and applaud your efforts.

   One answer (as one who has only ever dealt with PICs) is that, from the get-it-done-now-without-an-EE-degree point of view, you can just buy an Arduino board and a motor shield and be up and running in minutes (as soon as it’s all delivered, anyway :-).

3. ap1.myopenid.com says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 9:55 am

   A PIC is a few bucks and requires a programmer in the vicinity of $50.

   An arduino clone is as little as $11 and doesn’t require a separate programmer.

   Even if you *didn’t* need to buy a programmer, the PIC solution just isn’t that much cheaper. Certainly not enough to be a jerk about it.

   You could also do it without an MCU at all and just a couple 4060s or whatnot. It’d be a few dollars cheaper yet again, and still another trade-off of ease of implementation. Maybe you could complain about that instead?

4. Holly says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 3:18 pm

   i can’t see the words “Googly eyes” without hearing Christopher Walken say them, thanks to that skit with him putting them on his houseplants!

   And why would you need any electronics on this at all? You can make this with two cheapie IKEA clocks!

5. Rob Cruickshank says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

   Older implementations of this idea:
   http://watchismo.blogspot.com/2007/09/rolling-eye-clocks-of-oswald-1927-1950.html

6. Volkemon says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

   I would just take an old 1970’s plug in alarm clock, simple 1:1 pulley from the hands, set up to two rotating eyes, and use the second hand to flap a tongue up and down…..or maybe a wild hair out the top just to add that ‘Yep- its running’ indication.

   If a googly eyed clock was that important to me.

   It is pretty cool looking. Neat idea.

7. Bert says:

   February 24th, 2009 at 11:23 pm

   Why is it called Google Eye? Cause Google recycled this Unix classic in Google Desktop or so? Know the classics dude!

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