Every horological enthusiast should be enthralled by Tohoku University of Art and Design student Suzuki Kango’s astounding hand-carved wooden automaton clock. With over 400 moving parts, Suzuki’s senior thesis exhibition project uses four magnetic stylus pens on a magnetic drawing board to mechanically write the full time every minute in 24-hour format – and it is a work of art.
Watching his viral Twitter video, you will see a beautifully complicated-looking mechanical contraption quietly ticking away, with “06:19” somewhat crudely scrawled on a white board in the center. A few seconds into the video, and the entire structure comes to life, the white board is cleared, and mechanical arms scratch out the time “06:20.” Then, in most likelihood, you restart the video to see it happen again, because it truly is that amazing.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
