Clockception Turns 24 Analog Clocks Into One Digital Clock

This unique timepiece uses 48 servo motors to spin 24 individual rotary displays.

Jeremy Cook
4 years agoClocks

When you picture an analog clock, you generally mean two hands rotating on a single axis. Clockception, however, uses 48 hands on 24 separate axes to form a sort of 8x3 matrix. It’s a brilliant piece, heavily inspired by the “ClockClock” kinetic sculpture. Besides having a lower cost, this device allows creator "Made by Morgan" to say he actually made it!

For its operation, Clockception features modular “sub-clocks” that plug into a wooden frame, cut out with a hole saw. Each individual unit includes two servo motors, which turn the hands independently via a rather clever 3D-printed gearing system. An Arduino Nano runs the overall clock, along with three 16-channel PCA9685 servo control boards. A DS1302 RTC module is tasked with timekeeping and a 5V, 2A power supply keeps everything going.

Beyond the physical and electrical complexity of the build, actually figuring out the hand patterns needed to create digits was also quite a challenge. This was assisted with the discovery of a “web technologies” version found here, though even with that solved there was quite a bit of calibration required.

Clockception can be seen in the video below, which looks beautiful, even if there is a kink or two that has to be worked out before permanent mounting. Hopefully the clock of clocks will give Morgan lots of time-tracking fun, and he's done all the design work if you want to make one yourself!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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