Once, Twice, Three Times a Nixie

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Try as he might, [Localroger] can’t seem to throw away a certain board that started life in one of the first digital industrial scales, the NCI DigiFlex model 5775. He recently gave it a third career as a nixie clock with an alarm.[Localroger] says the board dates to about 1975. It’s all TTL, no microprocessor...
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DCF77 Powered Clock is a Work of Art

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[Brett] just completed his DCF77 Master Bracket Clock, intended to be a backup to an old logic controlled clock he made. For our readers that don’t know, DCF77 is a German longwave time signal whose transmitter is located near Frankfurt (Germany). Every minute, the current date and time are sent on the 77.5kHz...
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How Much Can You Cram Into a Wristwatch

Creating wearable electronics that are functional and not overly bulky is very, very hard. [Zak], though, makes it look easy. He started his DIY digital wrist watch to see how much he could cram into a watch-sized device. The finished product is really incredible, and one of the most amazing DIY watches we’ve...
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Making an UNIX Clock While Making a Few Mistakes Along the Way

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Sometimes the projects we think are easy to design are the ones on which we end up making the most mistakes. The UNIX clock that you see in the picture above is one of these projects. For our readers that don’t know it, UNIX time is the number of seconds since 00:00 on January 1st 1970. The clock that [James]...
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Arduino Astronomic Clock Automates Lights

[Paulo's] garden lights are probably a bit more accurately automated than anyone else’s on the block, because they use latitude and longitude clock to decide when to flip the switch. Most commercial options (and hobbiest creations) rely on mechanical on/off timers that click on an off every day at the same...
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The Greenest Wall-Powered Clock

Some of the most inefficient appliances in the home are AC mains-powered clocks. You can’t exactly turn them off and they use a whole lot of energy considering how often they’re looked at. [t3andy] came up with a great low power AC Mains clock that is only on 3% of the time. As a neat bonus, it also looks...
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Game of Life Clock

[Alex] wanted to make an LED clock. But simply making an LED array clock was far too easy — so he decided to make it follow some interesting rules…Ever heard of John Conway’s Game of Life? It’s quite simple — there are four rules.Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.Any...
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An Overly-Complicated Logic Chip Clock

When a normal alarm clock just won’t do, the only option is to build your own, entirely out of discrete logic chips. [jvok] built this alarm clock for last year’s 7400 Logic Competition. In a desire to go against the grain a little bit, [jvok] decided to use 4000-series logic chips. It was allowed under...
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Heathkit Clock Updated With a PIC32 and GPS

One of [Bob's] most treasured possessions is a Heathkit alarm clock he put together as a kid. Over the years he’s noticed a few problems with his clock. There isn’t a battery backup, so it resets when the power goes out. Setting the time and alarm is also a forward only affair – so stepping the clock back...
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Fire Bell Wakes you for Work by Shaving Years off your Life

If you suck at getting up in the morning [Jake Lee] has a solution that will make sure you don’t get fired from your job. Unfortunately it’s going to scare the life out of you — but maybe we’re just not hard enough sleepers to appreciate the value in an alarm clock that’s so horribly loud.At first we wondered...
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