Analog Voltmeter Clock Makes an Excellent Father’s Day Present

Hacker Michael Teeuw credits his father for imbuing him with his his technical enthusiasm, so what better Father’s Day gift than a clock made out a trio of analog voltmeters? That seemed like a great idea in 2017, but as with many projects, Teeuw missed his initial deadline, making it perfect to complete in 2018!

His clock uses an Arduino Nano to control the gauges, while an RTC module with a battery backup keeps track of the time. In order to scale everything to 0–5V, he replaced the original 180K resistor with a 5.6K device, forgoing tedious math and instead finding the right value experimentally. Along with this resistor scaling, Teeuw printed out a new faceplates to represent hours, minutes, and seconds, and added white LEDs to shine under the indicator.

To pull everything together, the finished project features a 3D-printed frame, built in three modules to fit on Teeuw’s printer. What makes it even more exciting is that it features a power-on test sequence, bouncing the hours, minutes, and seconds on the display before settling on the actual time. If you’d like to try something similar, code for this excellent clock is found on GitHub.

[h/t: Reddit]