Amazing artwork using clocks

[Toby Catlin]

I just saw this video and thought it looked amazing: http://www.humanssince1982.com/a-million-times/

It looks like a cool project and I couldn't help thinking about how you could build one. They don't mention how any of it works. So I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on how you might recreate this.

I thought you could take a clock mechanism that updates itself via radio signal and an Arduino to override the radio signal with hard wired input. Then link all the Arduinos into a master controller that could trigger any clock to move to a particular time.

Any ideas how you could network 288 (24x12) Arduino chips so they could each receive a time to change to. Maybe a SPI serial protocol? Can it work like that?

toby

[Tristan Scott]

It cannot use a conventional clock mechanism, as the hands are geared together. It's got to be a pair of servos or stepper motors driving each pair of hands individually. Even with one arduino handling more than one clock face that's a lot of coordination... some general clock pulse to keep them all in step, then some sort of network to pass instructions by address. It'd probably be easier to use raspberries in terms of handling communications (just use cheap generic network gear, a 48-port switch) - but multiple clocks per controller is key to not being ludicrously expensive.
The raspberry has many 3.3v output pins - could a hand be positioned using a pulse length output by this 3.3v pin controlling a servo - ? possibly a power transistor, but moving a hand should be possible using very little energy.

Looks like an arduino mega with 54 pins could drive 32 servos - so 16 clock faces. Still a lot of arduinos though!

Um, back to work, I guess.

Tristan Scott
Softcraft Computer Services Ltd
07837 205829
01692 535355

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[Marion Catlin]

I bet Tim Hunkin would know

[Marion Catlin]

Or ants

Marion Catlin BA(Hons) Design PGDip Cultural Planning AD:UK Senior Fellow
Free range cultural development and communications professional 

specialising in arts, culture and heritage

Director The Shift Norwich: Culture Shift, Design Shift and Digital Shift

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