Guy made a custom clock case out of aluminum for our Bulbdial Clock kit. It turned out beautifully! There are some really nice pictures of the design and build process, so definitely go check out his post.
Thanks for sharing your build, Guy!
Tag Archives: bulbdial clock
Bulbdial Clock Assembly Timelapse
Andreif shared this timelapse of building a Bulbdial Clock Kit on twitter:
Bulbdial from
@EMSL completed. Thanks again to@maltman23 &@jprodgers for the terrific solder workshop at@netz39.
Bulbdial Tree Topper
From Maniacal Labs comes this unusual use for a Bulbdial Clock.
Field Trips: Atmel Headquarters
Super Awesome Sylvia and I were invited to attend Bring Your Kids to Work Day at Atmel recently. (Atmel, of course, is the company that makes the microcontrollers found inside Arduino products and in many of our own projects and kits.) We were there to help provide tangible, interesting, and playful examples of how Atmel chips can be used. And of course, we weren’t going to miss an opportunity to visit Atmel headquarters!
The biggest hit with the kids were the Octolively interactive LED modules (sporting the Atmel ATmega164P). When the kids waved their hands over them, the LEDs would light up and ripple. Some of the kids would start out by poking and grabbing at the LEDs until they lit up, but as soon as I told them it would work “even without touching it” their eyes would get big, and they’d wave their hands over the top, enthralled.
Some of the other things we brought were our handheld game, the Meggy Jr RGB (with the ATmega328P); a Bulbdial Clock (Atmega328P again), which points rings of LEDs at different heights down at a central point to create shadow hands of different lengths; our giant Alpha Clock Five (ATMega644A); and the Larson Scanner (ATtiny2313A), which lights up nine red LEDs to make a scanning robot eye.
Another project that captured the kids’ attention was a Keepon by BeatBots. Other demonstrations included a quadcopter and a hacked hexabot.
We got to have lunch in the bright sun in the courtyard with Avary Kent, who was demonstrating the PuzzleBox, a brain-controlled helicopter.
Sylvia got to give the PuzzleBox a try, triggering it to fly as soon as she concentrated hard enough.
After lunch, we got to tour of a couple of labs. This workbench was well stocked with a Metcal soldering iron (our favorite) and lots of tools and supplies.
Apparently the poor Pleo on this bench needed some repair.
This machine is for inspecting and testing chips after they have been removed from their housing.
We got to go into the RF anechoic chamber, and watch as our cell phones stopped receiving any signals.
We also had some time to hang out and horse around with friends new and old. Our friend Paul Rako seemed to be having as much fun as the kids.
Thanks to Paul and Atmel for inviting us to visit!
From the mailbag
Michael wrote in to say:
I ordered a Bulbdial Clock kit from your company on Wednesday Feb 7, 2013; it was waiting for me at the door on the 9th. Suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased with the rapid shipment of the product.
Following the html instructions I was able to assemble the project without errors the first time and got a working Bulbdial clock in about 2 hours (my whole family thinks it is cool).
Once again thanks for being there for an old kit builder.
Thanks, Michael!
On the design of the Bulbdial Clock
One of our favorite projects of the last year is our Bulbdial Clock, an LED shadow clock based on an idea from Ironic Sans. And, while we have written a fair bit about it, we haven’t yet taken the time to describe some of the interesting technical details.
So in what follows here, we discuss some of those details, with an emphasis on a few in particular that we’ve been asked about. First, the process of designing and prototyping “funny shaped” circuit boards, but also charlieplexing LEDs in a mixed array, and (finally) getting that rear-projection scheme to work.
Continue reading On the design of the Bulbdial Clock
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Year 4
Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has now been around for four years. We’ve collected some interesting projects from this past year to celebrate.
Microcontroller and Electronics Projects:
Moving from breadboard to protoboard
Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes
Accelerometer with an AVR (updated)
Wallet-size LED Resistance Calculator
Science:
Gibberellic Acid and Giantism in Sprouts
Simple LED Projects:
Food Hacking:
Marmalade: easier than it looks
Kit Projects:
Crafty Projects:
Geek Design:
Typgraphical Character Coasters
And, don’t forget, you can win a Peggy 2 or one of 13 other prizes in our clock
concept contest, going on this week.
Related:
ComBots Cup IV this weekend!
Come join us at the ComBots Cup at the San Mateo Fairgrounds on Saturday, December 19 and Sunday, December 20 from 2-7 pm. (Get tickets here.) And if taking your loved ones to see combat robotics wasn’t gift enough, you can do a little last minute holiday shopping without having to brave the mall! We’ll have a selection of kits (and a few robot repair parts) on hand. You can try out Meggy Jr RGB and see the new Bulbdial Clock in person.
Read more about the event at Suicide Bots. Special treat for our readers who attend: mention this post and we’ll give you an RGB LED in your choice of style. Hope to see you there!The Bulbdial Clock Kit
Back in April, we posted a little project in which we demonstrated a simple Bulbdial clock, based on the original concept from IronicSans.com. We had a lot of feedback on the original project. We listened to it, learned from it, and finally designed a kit around the concept.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Year 3
Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is now three years old.
To celebrate, we’re rounding up our most interesting projects from this past year.
Quick projects and observations:
The monetary density of things
Contact Lens Case Small Parts Tray
Simple LED Projects:
Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights
Food Hacking:
South Indian Restaurant Menu Decoder
Improved Custom Message Hearts
CandyFab
Papercraft
Electronics Projects
Interactive LED Dining Table Circuit
Dark detecting jack-o’-lantern
Kit Projects
Crafty Projects
Microcontroller Projects
Tennis for Two, a video game from 1958
Scariest Jack-o’-Lantern of 2008
Geek Design
(Whew!)
