Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
Back in 2019, I built a simple voltmeter clock:
As the name implies, these clocks use analog panel voltmeters instead of traditional clock faces to display time. I didn’t come up with the idea, so I never really blogged about the design; I just built one and kept it on my office desk.
The idea endures, but most of the designs I see on the internet are needlessly complicated and not all that pretty, so when I decided to build a revised design, I figured it might be good to document it better. The process started with a rough mockup in a 3D design program:
For this version of the meter clock, I opted to use three generic, 90° panel voltmeters from Amazon ( link , about $9). I disassembled them, took careful measurements of the faces, and then printed replacement decals on adhesive paper. Printable PDF templates can be found here .
Note that the new hour gauge has 13 divisions, from 0 to 12, while the minute and second templates have 61 divisions, from 00 to 60. This is because I wanted to implement continuous motion for each hand; this meant that at 11:30, the hour dial couldn’t be just stuck at 11; it needed to be moving toward the twelfth division, even if it was never to reach it.