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Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

hellorhei.com

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Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#91

Post by damjanstankovic »

monopolemagnet wrote: post #85
damjanstankovic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Higher viscosity filler fluid and/or a ferro-binding compound to dampen the "springy" vibrations and ferro "spikes"? Btw: Comes off a labor of love and insanely-awesome attention to design and detail. Outstanding. Kickstarter/indiegogo/lockitron selfstarter page yet? :)

Yeah making just any prototype should have been much easier, i really tried to make something that looks beautiful even when its not animated.

KS, maybe one day :)

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#92

Post by damjanstankovic »

bigiain wrote: post #77
jonah wrote: post #74

Really nicely done! Is all the equipment yours or did you work in a Makerspace or something?

Check out the credits at the end of the page: http://www.hellorhei.com/ No mention of a particular Makerspace, but obviously a lot of collaboration with people with various tools/skills.

Yeah, so far no makerspace here in Serbia, however we have a lot of small local businesses and craftmans that you can pay to get something done.

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#93

Post by StavrosK »

sramsay wrote: post #87

It doesn't seem to say so anywhere on the page, but "Rhei" is presumably a reference to the ancient Greek phrase, "panta rhei" (πάντα ῥεῖ), which means "everything flows." It's associated with the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, and while the phrase itself doesn't occur in any of his extant writings, it's reminiscent of his famous observation that you can never step into the same river twice. Pretty awesome name…

Rhei is just Greek (modern and ancient) for "it flows" (ρέει).

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#95

Post by aw3c2 »

elinchrome wrote: post #82
Crito wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does vimeo have some sort of unspoken rule that all videos must have a hundred cuts a minute or something? This style of film making is incredibly obnoxious.

It's shown to increase excitement and therefore engagement.

And here I am, waiting for the video to fully load in another tab so I can skip around to find where it actually shows the product.

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#97

Post by Osmium »

StavrosK wrote: post #93
sramsay wrote: post #87

It doesn't seem to say so anywhere on the page, but "Rhei" is presumably a reference to the ancient Greek phrase, "panta rhei" (πάντα ῥεῖ), which means "everything flows." It's associated with the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, and while the phrase itself doesn't occur in any of his extant writings, it's reminiscent of his famous observation that you can never step into the same river twice. Pretty awesome name…

Rhei is just Greek (modern and ancient) for "it flows" (ρέει).

Which also gives us rheology (study of flow), diarrhea ("a flowing through"), rhythm (measured flow), etc. Ultimately coming a Proto-Indo-European root (*sreu-? I think), which also gives us the Rhine river and the word 'stream', amongst others. The more you know.

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#99

Post by damjanstankovic »

SammoJ wrote: post #76
robbrown451 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't find anywhere in the video where it was changing the time in real time....it either shows it while staying at a certain time, or shows it in fast motion. Am I looking in the wrong place?

I was also desperate to see this. And rightly so, here's what looks like a prototype link from above - and it's beautiful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-drmRYsvUaM You can really appreciate the difference between the gentle movement induced with mechanically actuated magnets, and the nasty instantaneous movement which would happen with electro.

Yeah it was the biggest challenge, how to gently move liquid and not "expose" the mechanism behind it so it looks that liquid is moving on its own. I have a lot more videos, feel free to send me an email stankovicdamjan@gmail.com i will share. My plan is to publish the making of presentation by the end of this week

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#100

Post by damjanstankovic »

cpayne wrote: post #78
damjanstankovic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually this was the hardest part, how to make numbers look thick and REAL, and connected. Here is a GIF that shows this nicely: https://www.dropbox.com/s/066c8502j2zwlwo/rheiani.gif?dl=0 Thats the reason why i had to work with ferrofluid and change its structure and composition, i wanted to have thicker numbers. Whole screen is 10mm thick inside, and numbers sometimes go up to 8mm of thickness. They are especially…

You've done that quite well. I'm surprised its that thick, but it looks like it give the numbers an awesome rounded look. Really adds to the organic look and feel. Well done!

Yeah, when there is no number it turns to big blobs of liquid that actually touch walls of the screen on both sides, so i guess its bigger than 10mm in that case
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