Great man, I would like to purchase this clock! Please sell me that prototype :D
Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
41–50 of 109 posts
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#42author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have
Is the display fast enough to include seconds?
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#43[deleted]
Most of the innovation in consumer clocks is aesthetic. Anyone can pick up a clock from Walmart that does everything they need and will last for years for cheap. Displaying the numbers by manipulating magnetic fluid is an interesting and pleasing way to do things. It's never going to be cheaper, more reliable, or more efficient than and LCD display. However, it doesn't have to be. That's not the point.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#44author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have
Is the display fast enough to include seconds?
It could, currently for animation i use 5 second interval, because its much more nice to look at because liquid slowly transforms. I will include new videos an GIF to show this.
However seconds would be doable but it would result in animation being constant since it needs about a second to transform, so i finally decided to go with HH:MM
Here is another video of this little thingy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoOMQ8TaTyE
you can see that the liquid is quite different, it was long time ago, but it basically acts the same but looks more blobby
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#45If you liked this, you'll probably also like Ferrolic: http://www.ferrolic.com/ Super mesmerizing to watch the ferro fluid making its way through the display. Edit: I remember reading that the ferro fluid used in Ferrolic would begin to lose its magnetic properties a few months in - Ferrofluids are fundamentally unstable. They're colloidal suspensions that rely on surfactants to keep the particles apart, and as the s…
If i use the regular ferrofluid it can last for quite long, however i dont like the effect of the fluid in that case, it has spikes and doesnt really look like a blob that i wanted to achieve. I have samples that are year old and work just fine so far.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#46Not to dismiss the website, but I could not reach it the first couple times so here is a direct link to the video: https://vimeo.com/140469553
I had a problem with my hosting, however one of my friends solved it. Thanks so much for jumping in :)
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#47Magnets & ferro fluids, excellent. Because of the video, I can literally see through the box into the 7 segment magnet chunks moving with the servos when the time ticks over. I like the simplicity & the way the tick flows into shapes. @damjanstankovic: can you throw up a Cinegraph/GIFV below the fold or something, so that the flow is clearly visible before we even head into the video itself? Like a 1,2,3...9 sequence…
I am just working on this :) Somehow we missed to put a part of the transforming numbers in the video because we were on such a tight schedule. I will be updating website and more important i will launch the making of document of the whole project that will show all of this.
GIF on the way :) thanks a lot!
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi DanBc, Thanks a lot! Wow... were to start.. Perhaps the biggest problem i had was preventing the ferrofluid to stain glass and aluminum frame i used for the screen. I tried to get some help on the faculty of chemistry here in Belgrade, but no real success. Finally after months and months of experimenting with different liquids, you start to feel and "undertand" the way ferrofluid behaves.. very strange :) Its stil…
> I had no training basically i had to learn all along the way. This is amazing. Very inspirational.
Thank you, much appreciated. I think this is my favorite project so far just because i learned the most.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#49That is absolutely beautiful. Congratulations on creating such a unique object; you must be very proud of your work!
Thank you so much. I am really, considering the fact that i started almost 4 years ago, then paused after few months and then spent almost the whole last year on it. Thanks again!