Make: Online : Laser sundial

Laser sundial

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.

XXI century sundial - Now for Arduino also!

Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: morezane on March 21, 2009 at 1:50 PM

love it

love it love it love it

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Posted by: celeriac on March 21, 2009 at 1:58 PM

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

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Posted by: Anonymous on March 21, 2009 at 2:11 PM

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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Posted by: Dave Bell on March 21, 2009 at 6:08 PM

Sundial ?

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

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Posted by: Michael Fusion on March 22, 2009 at 1:20 PM

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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