Great job on the Hard Drive Clock and thanks for the mention about the clock that I built. 🙂
"The clock works by removing the top of the hard drive and cutting a slot into the platter. Then lights are mounted underneath and flashed as it spins. By timing it right you can create the illusion of clock hands, color bars or other designs. I have quite a few magnets lying around so my first thought was I could eliminate 2 of the three platters by using a magnet on the top platter and a magnetic sensor to detect it. The one disadvantage to this method is I now have to cover the entire bottom of the drive case in white instead of just one strip of white tape. If everything is flat it works well. If things stick up at weird angles you get shadows."
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Very nice project
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This is sweet, but is it just me, or are the clock hands running backwards?
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Tony… it’s not just you.
Very interesting project. I’ve been thinking of tinkering with a hard drive clock. However, most of the ones I’ve looked at and have actually seen are too loud to use on a regular basis. Something like this one could conceivably be used as a picture display. It would take a few more bits of electronics, though.
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This is a nice project.
Had to think a little bit how it works, but now i understand it 🙂
The patterns look nice.
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As far as the noise, you could always mount the finished project in a (mostly) sealed acrylic case, or at least a sound-dampening one…
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Very nice Project…
I am currently working on a tiny harddrive Project.
It uses a nipkow disk with 12 lines and a 18f2550 controller.
Now myproblem, i cannot het the platters spinnig continously. When I turn on the Harddisk it spins up and then stops after a few seconds.
now I ordered a BLDC Motorcontroller for RC modells, hoping to get the HD motor working with it.
greets HHD
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Man this thing is cool. Very inspiring use of an old hard drive… giving me ideas as I look at a stack of dead hard drives on my shelf.