I really love clocks. I think this is I am living here in Switzerland. Beside of that: clock projects are just fun :-). After I have completed a single clock using stepper motors (see “DIY Stepper Motor Clock with NXP LPC845-BRK“), I wanted to build a special one which is able to show up to four different time zones: Below an example with London (UK), New York (USA), Beijing (China) and Lucerne (Switzerland):
A microcontroller (NXP LPC845, ARM Cortex-M0) is driving 8 stepper motors, one clock uses two motors, each individually controlled. Because the motors are special 360° motors, the zero position is determined with a magnet and a hall sensor for each hand. Using a serial connection, the clock can be configured. Because the clock can be away from a host PC, the clock uses RS-485 (to communicate).
See the video above and see the blog post for additional videos and detailed build notes.
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