{"id":1402,"date":"2012-08-22T09:50:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T17:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/k7nvh.com\/wordpress\/?p=205"},"modified":"2012-08-22T09:50:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T17:50:35","slug":"stepper-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/?p=1402","title":{"rendered":"Stepper Clock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy All,<\/p>\n

I’ve got a few projects going on lately, but only one of them is into the physical realm so far, so I thought I’d show you a bit of it.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago I got hold of an old broken laser printer. I disassembled the thing, and took out the interesting bits. A few motors, some pulleys\/belts, and a little air pump. Anyway, one of the motors was a small stepper, and has been of particular interest to me, just in terms of positioning capability.<\/p>\n

Finally, a few weeks ago I decided what I actually wanted to do with said motor. I figured I’d use it to make a clock\/analog meter of some sort. Then my imagination began to run away with me and I started thinking about how pretty I could make it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I ended up grabbing a large piece of scrap board I had laying around, sanded and stained it up real nice, mounted the stepper on the back, and gave it numbers and a pointing needle. With all the hardware in brass.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the back side of the board after I stained it. Just to give you some idea of what the front side looked like before staining.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the board after staining. Pretty isn’t it? Also, the knots look like a bird’s face.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the front with the brass needle and numbers added. The numbers were done with small brass tacks that I hammered in. The needle is just a bit of round brass hobby stock. The stepper is mounted with two brass screw head bolts, and the peg to stop the needle is just a brass machine screw.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the back of the board with the electronics installed.<\/p>\n

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And here’s a bit more of a closeup.<\/p>\n

Upper left is what used to be a Lithium battery charger from SparkFun. It broke a while ago, and while I was looking for a DC barrel jack for power, this board was laying there and had one on it. So, instead of removing the jack and placing it on the main board, I left it where it was and added a switch and some wire.<\/p>\n

Middle board is just an ATmega328p on a proto-board I had laying around. It’s got a little real-time clock chip, and a temperature sensor also on the board.<\/p>\n

Bottom right is the stepper motor driver board (also from SparkFun) and the stepper motor itself. (I still need to mount this board down. For now it’s just hanging there.)<\/p>\n

Anyway. I don’t have it programmed yet. So it’s not telling the time, or the temperature. But it IS a clock in potentia, and I think it looks really damn good. Anyway. I’m pleased.<\/p>\n

P.S. You also might notice that the clock goes from 0 to 10, which makes telling time difficult. I plan to add a small LED on the end of the needle that will mean +10, so noon will be +10 and pointing at 2. You’ll have to figure out AM and PM for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howdy All, I’ve got a few projects going on lately, but only one of them is into the physical realm so far, so I thought I’d show you a bit of it. A couple years ago I got hold of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}