What sort of clock are you watching to herald in the New Year? One of the deep seams of the DIY hardware is the custom clock. None of these projects is essential, but you probably will end up wanting one.

Part of the fun of looking at how other people have created innovative clocks is thinking how you could replicate them and how you could make them better.

My first offering is Time Twister:

So how to make it?

"Time Twister 5 is a 3d printed digital clock with twisting layers. The digits are produced by twisting the layers to front one of three faces. Each layer is powered by a micro servo motor. The servo motors are controlled by Arduino MEGA."

What is more you can see four other models of Time Twister at its creator's web site. Is there a simpler way to do the job? I don't think so, but that's still a lot of servos.

The next clock is nuts... in a nice way. Build a robot arm using five servos and a Raspberry Pi. It's a completely insane way to bring a broken clock back to life, but this is the new age of AI and higher-level solutions:

You can find out how to build the robot arm at GitHub and, yes, its open source.

The next clock is a Holo Clock but I think its more of a Hollow Clock. Not sure I could cope with reading it in an emergency, but then I like to know where my numbers are:

It is available as a 3D printer project on Instructables.

Our next clock reverts to a more standard 7-segment display, but what a display. I love the way the segments slide in and out of the display - spooky!:

Again, this one is available as an instructable should you want to build it.

So what about the coming year - any new ways of showing the time? And, no Nixi tubes, delightful though they are - been done.

• Harry Fairhead has a hardware background having worked with microprocessors and electronics in general, for many years. He is the author of Raspberry Pi IOT in C, 2nd Ed and Raspberry Pi IoT in C with Linux Drivers and co-author of Raspberry Pi IOT in Python with GPIO Zero  and Raspberry Pi IoT In Python Using Linux Drivers. His most recent books are Programming the Raspberry Pi Pico in C and Programming the Raspberry Pi Pico in MicroPython.

More Information

https://tiltedtwister.com/

https://github.com/devdrik/robo-arm

https://www.instructables.com/3D-Printed-Holo-Clock-With-Arduino/
https://www.instructables.com/Kinetic-Digital-Clock-Arduino-3D-Print/

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