hard drive clock is the most beautiful hard drive clock ever

September 15th, 2009 comments stumble it! digg it! by: technabob

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a clock fabricated from an old hard drive. But this is by far the most amazing, dramatic hard drive clock you’ll see today. Or any day for that matter.

hard_drive_pov_clock

Polish modder mb1988 built this hard drive clock uses the old persistence-of-vision (POV) illusion, which display phantom “hands” on the face of the spinning drive platter. A set of colorful LEDs encircle the platter, blinking rapidly to illuminate the current time on a slot cut into the face of the platter. An ATMEGA128 microcontroller under the hood that makes the lights blink at precisely the right moment to create the illusion. There’s even a remote control that lets mb change the colors and effects on demand. But what makes this clock design really special is the incredibly detailed and evocative etching under the clock’s Plexiglas face.

hard_drive_clock_2

You can check out the entire build log and schematics (Polish/machine translated) over on Elektroda. Don’t understand how it works? Check out the video below to see the clock in action: