A collection of unusual clocks

Since you seem to have come to this page from “outside” the PLD Designs site, here's a special message just for you:

Please visit my Color-Coded Combinatorial Clock page. That is where you will learn what the image to the right means.

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Some other unusual clocks, hard and soft, can be found at the following sites:

(Links checked October 2011). There's getting to be a lot of entries...about time to categorize.

• The “Close Enough Clock” . A similar idea, in that the resolution is the same 5 minutes, however the display is a com­bin­ation of one or two digits and a sweep hand (sweep arc would be a better term). A free downloadable software version (PC-Windows) can be found on the site.
• The “ChromAChron” . Another method of using colour to tell the time. I suspect mine is easier to learn, though. The resolution of the (analog) display is low, but that is the whole point! It seems that one revolution of the dial takes 24 hours. There is some mention of the colour selection being related to the colour of the sunlight at the time of day, an interesting concept, but not practical for two reasons: the amount (and colour) of sunlight varies significantly with the time of year and lattitude, and, on average the sun doesn't shine for half of the day: shouldn't those hours be black? The timepiece at the linked site is a software version of a watch that was manufactured in the 1970s, see also: “CrazyWatches”  (and check out their menu!) for another page about the watch. A similar approach can be found in this JavaScript-run demo .
• The “Chronulator” . A very neat idea: uses analog meters as the hours and minutes indicators. The clock is available in several forms, from kits of parts to bare boards to assembled boards. Assembly into the case of your choosing is always required. Shown here is just an hours display: . I've contributed to this project by re-designing the DIP-based kit circuit to use SMD components insted. See my own page .
• This may be the first modern clock that used a meter movement... . There are several other projects around, some use R/C type servo units to emulate D'Arsonoval meters.
• Here we have a guy named Roman Black who tried to create his own standard which he called “the Black-Standard,”  a crafty variation on a straight binary clock. The idea was to use three binary codes: hours, quarter hours and (extra) minutes which count from 0 to 14. A good simplification idea, I think. He once sold kits for the clocks, but now the circuit and code is open: see this page , it just requires a common 18-pin PIC and some LEDs, not much else.
• Another clock that uses colour LEDs to display the time: ElectroBob's CoMBi Clock ... (see here)
• And one that, at first look, seems to be a conventional clock but it uses LEDs to cast shadows of a central post which look like hands...neat! It is from the Evil Mad Scientist folks, check their Bulbdial page ... (Preview image here.)
• Electronics USA . A small electronics manufacturer which sells, among other items, some binary clocks.
• And here's a guy who decided to use a PIC to make a clock  that tells what he calls metric time where the day is divided into 100,000 parts; (each part is 0.864 of a second), as well as hexadecimal time (65,536 parts) and “Circle Time” (2 pi per day; 0 to 6.2832, so 62,832 parts), instead of the usual 86,400 seconds per day.
• Digitale Nixieröhrenuhr . How is your German? Re­mem­ber Nixie tubes? Here are some Nixie Tubes, with a large supporting cast! Fascinating even though I can't read the text: a translated version   isn't a whole lot of help (about a half of it is—poorly—translated, though this is a greater amount than a few years ago).
• If you want a smaller Nixie tube clock, then the CMOS/Nixie hybrid at “My Nixie Clock Project”  might be for you. The author of this site is also German (what is it about Germany and Nixies?) but he provides a translation that is much better than the automatic one in the previous item.
• And if you want a really small Nixie timepiece, then a Nixie Watch  is for you! (That design was inspired by this one , where some other {GPS-synchronized, no less!} Nixie clocks are actually for sale!)
• There's a bunch of Nixie and Decatron clocks here:  .
• The “Chrono Lisa” . A company that sells one unique style of LED clock. One fan of this clock format is science fiction author Alan Dean Foster  who features it on his pages.
• Chrono Art.  . A company that sells some unique clocks. These tend toward the artistic (but still functional) side of things.
• The Geochron.  . A non-cheap, world-wide, wall-mount timepiece. Quite the device!
• A site called the Java clock shop had lots of ideas, but had dissapeared by 2008. Another site which includes a link to the same site, Internet Clocks, Counters, and Countdowns, has lots of pointers to software clocks, although lots of the places it links to are gone/moved. Another site that lists software clocks also has a JavaScript section: National Association of watch and clock collectors.  
• While looking into software clocks, the best (IMHO) Windows on-screen clock is World Time . Updated to version 6 beta 3 in 2004, I have been using version 5 for at least 5 years.
• A similar Windows clock can be found at Basta Computing  , however it is shareware, not freeware.
• Wooden-Gear-Clocks.com  is just what the URL suggests. Kits and plans to make your own decidedly low-tech, but beautiful, clocks.
• While we're looking at wooden clocks, “Clock-Plans.com” has a few: Clock Plans .
• A site that has a lot of clock links is found at: Mike's Clock Clinic . He has obviously spent more time on the web looking for strange clocks than I have. One very unusual example of what he had found (but is no longer linked to, as far as I could see) is the Bar Code Clock,  (take a look)!
• And there are usually some interesting ideas in the Hack A Day clock category . One clock that I recently noticed there is a “word clock”,  which uses an array of LEDs to illuminate pre-defined words from behind. It's a five-minute resolution clock too! It turns out that this is a hack of a very much more expensive design of German origin  (what, no nixies!?).