LED Hard Drive Clock Demo

This is a hard drive clock I built from a 3.5" hard drive, some tri-color LEDs and a PIC16F252 microcontroller. It works by shining the LEDs underneath a platter with a slot cut into it, and by timing the various colors it can produce an analog clock display as well as other patterns.

I got the idea from this page:
http://alan-parekh.com/projects/hard-...

And here is my page with more details:
http://www.ian.org/HD-Clock/

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  People & Blogs

[Liam Smolenaars]

How do you balance the disk with the cut out?

[ianorg]

There are holes in the spindle where you can place weights, so I sanded down screws to balance out the cut.

[TripleEBattery]

loud clock

[3ATPAXEP]

some day If I will work hard I'll make some difficult thing too

[TinselKoala .]

That's really neat. I checked out your site and saw the pictures of the final version. I wonder this: why didn't you locate the little timing magnet on the edge, bridging the cutout itself? This would have done two things: stabilise the cut by connecting the edge back together; and balance the disk by adding the weight of the magnet right where the disc material was removed. You'd lose a tiny bit of light at the edge but I think it might pay off. Timing set in sofware, right, so can be adjusted.

[rochajoela]

Good job!

[jumpingtuners]

dude u turn back time



[DifferentKev]

the video is mirrored...

[Phino K.M.]

Well thats a sort of unpractical clock considering how big and noisy it is, but mainly because the the clock arms spin counterclockwise... I mean come on, which clock spins counterclockwise? :D

[Xu Ma]

Is it a count back clock?

[bajozeroar]

You are a genius! I'm working on the same project and I know how difficult it is

[Stone Built]

.... 5400rpm with a slot cut in the disk? thats going to last....

unbalanced much..

cool though, i guess?