This is the time of year when the clocks change to provide us with daylight saving and a significant trauma. The time is ripe to think of innovative clocks and one thing about clocks is that they suit a round display.

You may already know that I have an interest in clocks as a way of demonstrating and stimulating creativity in electronics and programming. Here are some that I have encountered recently.

My first clock offering this equinox shows just how far things have come since the dripping water clock, the sundial or even the digital watch. This clock using Stable Diffusion to generate its clock face which it addorns with pizza slices - yes it a pizza clock.

For me the surprise was that circular displays are reasonably priced - a 5-inch for about $150. Even so there is probably scope for a cheapo solution with a retangular screen behind a cut out.

The actual hardware is easy enough - it is based on a Raspberry Pi, what else. And it has simple web-based software. It's all available at https://github.com/likeablob/pizza-clock under an MIT license.

Of course, if you want a round display then perhaps the easiest way of doing the job is to use a round display! Before computers, physical round displays were common place - clocks, speedometers, altitude meters and so on. Bret Oliver has a liking for aviation instrumentation and he has a very nice clock design based on three analog gauges driven by an EPS32 and three NEMA17 stepper motors. You can probably guess the basic design for the sofware, but it has some bells and whistles - an inset LED display for the seconds, chimes for the hours and quaters and a PIR is used to shut the clock down when no one is arround to look at it. To do this the stepper motors need to know where they are and a hall effect sensor does this job.

I think the wooden plinth an aero style switches makes it look really good.

You can find constructional details at: https://www.brettoliver.org.uk/Aviator_Clock/Aviator_Clock.htm

So circular displays... I can think of some alternative clock displays to pizza - what about apple pie. As to aviation clock dials again there is scope for repurposing all sorts of gauges in novel clocks.

• Harry Fairhead, I-Programmer's hardware guru, is the author of books about many popular IoT devices including the ESP32 which he covers in Programming the ESP32 In C Using the Arduino Library, Programming The ESP32 In C Using The Espressif IDF and Programming the ESP32 in MicroPython.  

More Information

https://github.com/likeablob/pizza-clock

https://www.brettoliver.org.uk/Aviator_Clock/Aviator_Clock.htm

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