Collection of Digital Clock Designs • Hacker News Board

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#21

Post by Razengan » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

For some really quirky/weird/cool physical clocks, the British Museum channel has a few great videos:

Curious Clocks and Watches through time with Oliver Cooke | Curator's Corner S8 E1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywD5kngMuYM

Nice inspiration for world building, especially Steampunk!

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#22

Post by macintux » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #21

For some really quirky/weird/cool physical clocks, the British Museum channel has a few great videos: Curious Clocks and Watches through time with Oliver Cooke | Curator's Corner S8 E1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywD5kngMuYM Nice inspiration for world building, especially Steampunk!

I had one of these in my bedroom as a kid. Clearly I slept more deeply than I do now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_ball_clock

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#23

Post by rsamtravis » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:02 PM UTC

The binary one in the bottom row seems to think that the digit to the left of of the 8s place is the 10s place and not, as is normal, the 16s place. Therefore 10 o'clock shows as "00010000" not "1010". Weird.

2300 hrs or 11pm shows as "00100011" which would be 35 o'clock. I guess the 32s place is a... 20s place? Somebody help me out here.

https://clocks.dev/clock/35bb1995bc5d

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#24

Post by alana314 » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:04 PM UTC

72mena wrote: post #10

Oh I love these! It just reminded me of a small project I had in which I was creating experimental watchfaces using SVGs and JavaScript, this is before the AI boom so I made all of these by hand and, although there's nothing impressive here, I'm proud of them as a designer who learned basic code by myself. https://watchface.netlify.app/ And I wrote about it here: https://72mena.medium.com/designing-watch-faces-using-…

These are awesome

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#25

Post by levmiseri » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:06 PM UTC

atulvi wrote: post #19

Please add this one (my design) https://euclid.tulv.in/

Tried my best at reproducing it: https://clocks.dev/clock/eee40ea8130b (but feel free to add your own real version of it! Anyone can add a clock via the top right button.

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#26

Post by kridsdale1 » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:12 PM UTC

throw0101d wrote: post #6

I'd really like an analog watch face for the lock screen of my iPhone.

Tim Cook would really like to sell you an Apple Watch.

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#27

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

My favorite digital clock was an LCD watch made by Fossil that had the digits spelled out in white Chinese characters on a cobalt background.

Not only did it show the characters, it slowly painted them on the screen. This wasn't a dot-matrix display. It was more like a 40-seg display. I've never been able to find a replacement, or even a photo of it online.

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#28

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

throw0101d wrote: post #6

I'd really like an analog watch face for the lock screen of my iPhone.

I'd really like an analog watch face for the lock screen of my iPhone.

I really wish I could turn the clock OFF on my iPhone. The best I can do is to change the numbers to a language I can't read, and make the characters really thin and translucent.

I've read that in iOS 27, we'll at least be able to make it small.

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#29

Post by levmiseri » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

ghewgill wrote: post #18

levmiseri wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing is that anyone can easily add such design. Created a simple 24-hour analogue face just now: https://clocks.dev/clock/c4a0aef0c379

Midnight at the bottom! I really like this one: https://sunclock.net

Added one more with some day/light signaling: https://clocks.dev/clock/ea4059c74748

Re: Collection of Digital Clock Designs

#30

Post by ryr11 » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

72mena wrote: post #10

Oh I love these! It just reminded me of a small project I had in which I was creating experimental watchfaces using SVGs and JavaScript, this is before the AI boom so I made all of these by hand and, although there's nothing impressive here, I'm proud of them as a designer who learned basic code by myself. https://watchface.netlify.app/ And I wrote about it here: https://72mena.medium.com/designing-watch-faces-using-…

I love this. You might've just convinced me to get back into hardware/PCB and make something to put on my wall (with your blessing). I'm not sure if it's just because I'm on mobile, but I think it would be great if the pages that show the watch faces in action had a way to input a time to see what it looks like.