How to make a clock from a hard drive. Clock from the hard drive. The minimum set of materials and tools
You've probably already heard of
wall clock made from a hard drive. The idea is original, but here
The following mod cannot be called plagiarism. The authors of yet another "hard watch"
decided to make everything much easier than their predecessors. For creating
this project only needs a drill and basic tools that
is in every home. Even knowledge of electronics is not required.
So, here's what you need:
It is advisable to find a defective sample. This article was contributed by
old 5.25-inch hard drive. In principle, you can use discs and
other sizes, there is nothing wrong with that;
- cheap Chinese watches. Although we will only need two things: the clock mechanism itself and two hands;
–
in this mod was used piece of IDE cable for attaching the resulting watch to the wall;
- six boxes of your favorite drink to wash a cool new watch.
We need the following tool:
- hand drill with two drills of different sizes;
- screwdriwer set;
- hammer;
- if you mount the clock to the wall, you will need an IDE cable
- knife and hot glue.
So let's get to work. The first step is to remove the top
hard drive protective cover. Usually the necessary screws are hidden behind
with a warning about the loss of warranty.
Then it is necessary to remove the screws holding the plates. It must be done
as carefully as possible so as not to touch the surface of the pancakes. Hold
they are best over the edges. During this mod, the first
plate detached easily. In order to take out the second one, I had to
disassemble the hard drive head assembly a little. During these
barbaric actions can come in handy brute force, since pancakes
are firmly secured in place.
After removing all the plates, it is necessary to take up the engine of the hard
disk. The top cover, to which the pancakes are attached, must be removed. WITH
using a screwdriver and a hammer, all bearings are removed from it.
Next
step - drilling a hole in the center of the hard drive motor from
one side to the other. This is a very difficult task to carry out.
it took a very long time for the author of the mod. The fact is that almost all
metal parts inside. Moreover, the drills were not quite available.
suitable for this business. Having earned, the author of the mod even drilled
part of the table. So be careful not to repeat the mistakes you make.
Next, you need to put the plates and the block of heads in their places. Then
insert the spindle into the drilled hole for securing the arrows. Myself
the clockwork should be located behind the hard drive. Following
then put the hard disk motor cover back on. Per spindle
put on the minute and second hands and screw on the protective cap.
If
if you want to make the clock a desktop, then the mod can be considered complete.
If you want to admire the beauty on the wall, then you need a couple more
simple operations. In our case, the clockwork is shifted to the upper
part of the hard drive. To keep the clock straight on the wall
you need to attach something from the bottom. The author in this situation
came up with an original and easy solution. He took an ordinary IDE cable,
cut off 15 cm.Then put one end into the corresponding connector on
hard drive, and the other hid behind it, while twisting to the necessary
diameter. After that, I just glued it to the hard drive and hung it on
wall.
So a short description of a very interesting mod has come to an end. The main
the charm lies in the simplicity and low cost of manufacture. Broken
a hard disk can be found in many, some special tools are not
applied, all the most common and common. Mechanism
Chinese watches can be purchased in any market for a ridiculous amount. But
but what a final result! Your friends and family will just
shocked by such a wonderful and unusual watch. So hard
drive and go.
By the way, do not forget about the purchased boxes of your favorite drink. Invite your friends to your home and celebrate the successful mod.
If you want to do something really amazing to show off to your friends, collect such a 3D clock. However, it may not necessarily be hours, because in electronics you can lay the display of almost any image. The controller is used here as a "thinking center" Arduino... It is he who decides exactly when and which LEDs need to be lit in order for the numbers to appear.
And everything works very simply, LEDs are fixed on a rotating stand, which turn on in a special way. The engine spins this stand from the hard disk of the computer. The received information is processed by our brain, and we see the image "hanging in space". If not for the roar of the engine, this picture could be imagined as a hologram.
DIY materials and tools:
- Arduino Uno controller;
- 6-15 LEDs;
- wires;
- 9V power supply;
- white tape (for QTI sensor);
- QTI Sensor (you can buy);
- an old hard drive with a working engine;
- support;
- power supply for the hard drive;
- Velcro;
- access to a 3D printer and modeling software.
However, for homemade products, a 3D printer is not required, everything can be made of wood or plastic, just a printer makes everything much easier.
Homemade craft process:
How it works
To connect a hard drive, you need a computer power supply. A piece of white tape is attached to the corner of the hard drive. The arduino controller, sensor, and LEDs are mounted on a rotating stand. The sensor is used as a color sensor, it is connected in parallel with the white tape. When the motor rotates, the sensor passes the white tape and the controller instructs the LEDs to turn on, as a result the current time flashes.
Step one. Disassembling the hard drive
First of all, you need to disassemble the hard drive, for this you need to unscrew a few screws. Sometimes it is not so easy, because the screws are made for a special screwdriver, and they are tightened quite tightly. You need to remove the top cover, as a result, access to the engine should appear.
You need to remove everything unnecessary from the hard drive, including the hard drive itself. Only the motor shaft and power board should remain.
Now one more nuance, the motor needs to be connected, many do not know how to do this, because the motor is multiphase here and will not work on the board without a generator. First, you need to connect power to the HDD from the power supply, but it will not turn on. To make it work, you need to connect the green wire to the black one.
Step two. Making a base for mounting electronics
The author made the basis using a 3D printer. As a result, everything comes out quickly, accurately and beautifully. But all this can be done from other materials, the most important thing here is that the structure reliably holds the electronics, otherwise it will fly apart in different directions when the motor is turned on.
In total, the base consists of five elements:
Base
This part will contain all the electronics. The base has a hole into which the LED tower is inserted. There is also a battery pack and an Arduino holder, they are glued on. At the bottom of the center there is a connecting ring that fits the connecting piece.
Connecting piece
There are three holes in this part, with the help of which it is attached to the hard drive hub. The foundation rests on it.
LED Tower
This element holds the LEDs. In total, you need 5 of them, but if necessary, you can install 15.
Arduino holder (optional)
This item can be purchased as needed.
Battery holder (optional)
This item can be bought
If you decide to print parts on a printer, then the necessary STL and ipt files are attached for these purposes.
Due to the fact that hard drives are different, the author's part may not fit on the mount. In this regard, the editor will need to change the files, making the mount specifically for your hard drive.
Step three. Installing LEDs
LEDs are mounted on an LED tower. For homemade products, you will need 5 LEDs, this is specifically for the clock. All the positive pins of the LEDs are arranged in one row, as are the negative pins.
Step four. Putting together the base
The connecting piece is attached to the motor hub with screws. The LED tower is inserted into the base. The connection is fixed with glue. The base is installed on the connecting piece and also sits on the glue.
Step five. Arduino battery and controller holder
Holders are installed on the base. The author fixes them with glue. Next, when the glue is dry, you can put the Arduino controller and 9V battery in place.
Step six. Connecting LEDs to minus
All negative pins of the LEDs need to be connected with one wire, and then this wire is connected to ground on the Arduino controller.
A switch is also installed on the base with glue.
Next, do not forget to install the QTI sensor on the base as well. It should point downward. There should be a tape parallel to the sensor and is approximately 1 inch long.
Step seven. How all the electronics are connected
Step eight. Setting the clock using code
The Arduino controller turns on the LEDs when the sensor passes near the white tape. We know that the QTI is hovering over the white tape because it returns a specific range of values. These values will be different for all POV watches. Therefore, your task is to find this threshold for your watch and drive it into the Arduino code.
To do this, you need to download sensorTest.ino to your controller. Open the serial monitor by placing QTI over the white tape. The serial monitor will print a range of values. The most common meaning needs to be written
Adjust the threshold until you feel comfortable. Since the author had a total value of 100, he guaranteed that his condition would be true if ls1 was less than 110 and greater than 90. We need this condition to be true if the QTI sensor passes over the white tape.
The final stage. Checking the clock
To check, you need to load hddClockTime2.ino by turning on the power of the controller and the power of the hard drive. The clock should show the current time. If the time is wrong, you can change it in code.
Today we will tell you how to make an interesting table clock from a hard drive with your own hands.
Hello everyone! I will share with you the stages and, of course, the result of making desktop from. In a simple way, a hard drive from. On occasion, I got as many as three disks. But the watch was made only of one, and the details of the others were included in this watch.
In the photo you can see the disk practically disassembled, with the cover already removed. 
The shiny L-shaped parts near the drive casing are the "holders" of the magnets from the other two hard drives. (The magnets are very strong and not easy to tear off). They were useful to me in other products. From the holders I made the legs for the watch. 
By the way, no additional parts were needed, all the screws and bolts appeared during the parsing. The most difficult part of assembling a watch is to wipe the disc itself to a shine. It has a mirror-like surface and gets dirty very easily. But scratching it is not so easy. The photo shows the assembly stages. The perforated washer is the hold-down washer from the disc. 
It was necessary to glue the M10 washer to it, because otherwise, when assembling with a clock mechanism, it (the mechanism) will not be able to pull off the disk and the case of the hard drive. 
I bought the clockwork assembly with hands separately (about 250r), but you can also remove it from the old boring watch. 
Here everything gradually gathered, wiped off the fingerprints and put the arrows and the battery in place. We put it in a prominent place and enjoy a beautiful and useful thing!)
Do you have a broken hard drive? Or do you know where you can find one ... Are you ready to turn such a "Winchester" into a unique watch?
This project only requires a little bit of skill, ingenuity and electronics knowledge.
The article presents two versions of the clock: a simple one without a dial and one that shows the time.
In the simple version, you can see three arrows, which in appearance resemble simple "mechanics". Three hands - hour, minute and second. Red hour, green - minute, blue - second.
In the second version, the hard disk can display the time.
The platter of the hard disk rotates at more than 60 times per second. Cutting through a narrow slit on the plate will allow the LEDs to shine through, and high-speed rotation can trick the eye into a stable image. This phenomenon is known as "preservation of vision" (POV). There are many projects where LEDs (moved or moved by the observer himself) are used to create images. The LEDs used in this project do not move. The image is constructed using the interference slots of the rotating disc.
The version that displays numbers is more complex ... You can easily see the time with an animation in the background.
Step 1: introduction
The system works synchronously with the slot in the disc. Homemade uses an internal timer to count each revolution. This is accomplished with a Hall effect sensor that triggers a hardware interrupt every time the disk is rotated completely. The microcontroller uses the rotation time and phase to schedule a second internal timer. This second timer uses an interrupt when scheduling LED timing to fire tens of thousands of times per second to build a stable, visible image.
For less than $ 60, you can put yourself together do it yourself... They are compact and do not make a lot of noise during operation.
Step 2: List of materials
Here's what you need:
- Damaged hard drive of a hard drive with a form factor of 6.35 cm (2.5 inches);
- 30-40W with fine tip;
- Solder;
- Pliers;
- 3mm hex head screws and screwdriver;
- Drill;
- Super glue;
- Hot melt glue gun.
Electronics:
- 0.5m (it is better to buy 1m) 5050 RGB LED strip;
- AH175 Hall sensor;
- ATmega8A SMD;
- DS1307 SMD;
- TDA1540AT SMD;
- Holder for 3 V battery;
- 12VDC 1A power supply;
- DC jack 3 pin
- LM2596 SMD;
- 5 position tactile switch;
- 2-pin SMD button;
- Coil, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, transistors, wires;
- ... (schema in file).
Acrylic plates for box and disc.
Step 3: disassemble the hard drive
Use a hexagonal screwdriver to open the cover.
Remove the retaining washers and take out the plates. Make sure to keep the screws, gaskets and plates.
Note : keep the readhead intact.
Hard disk magnets have strong magnetic fields, so keep them away from electronic equipment to avoid interference.
Keep all components except the hard drive bracket in a sealed box to protect them from dust. We'll put them back together later.
Step 4: drill holes
Using 3 mm and 5 mm drill, drill holes in where shown in the figure. Install the LED and sensor wire through this hole.
Step 5: connect the BLDC motor
The motor that was installed in the hard drive (brushless DC) has 4 pins: COM, MOT1, MOT2, MOT3.
Solder 4 small wires to the motor terminals. They will connect to the motor output.
The weld is very small and can break easily. Therefore, we will fill the place of soldering with hot glue.
Step 6: Hall sensor
We put the sensor on the edge of the plate, where the magnet will be attached, which will generate a signal to the microcontroller.
The Hall sensor AH175 has 3 outputs: one for GND, one for VCC and one for signal contacts.
We use a 10 kΩ pull-up resistor to confirm that the expected logic levels are set at the microcontroller inputs.
Solder the sensor onto a small PCB with a screw hole to fix its position.
Step 7: Testing RGB LED Strip
For the best effect, it is necessary to "surround" the plate with LEDs.
The project used a 5050 RGB LED strip. There are 60 LEDs on one meter of this tape.
If you are using a standard hard drive, the platter should fit about 12 LEDs.
The LED strip can be divided into three parts. One part will consist of 16 LEDs. This will leave room for the sensor to fit the reader / writer. Make sure you cut the tape along the line between the copper tabs, cutting elsewhere can damage the tape and render it useless.
If there are no wires on the tape that you are going to use, you should solder the power wires. Determine the location of the red, blue, green and 12V power supply and solder the four wires to the copper tabs. Tinning the contact pads before soldering. After connecting the wires, remember that the connections are fragile. Let's check the performance of the tape using a 12 V power supply.
Step 8: attach the LED ring to the hard drive
Before installing the strip on the disc, pass the wire through the hole. Then we will solder the LED wires. Be very careful not to break the copper tracks.
Let's drop a drop of superglue, slowly attach a strip of LED strip to the chamber wall, while pressing it tightly for a strong connection. This is necessary as the LEDs are flush mounted, so work slowly and carefully.
Step 9: make the background
Most hard drives are matte black. This is not the best color for a beautiful gift, so we will make a mirror surface.
Take a piece of thick, white paper (photo paper for inkjet printers) and outline the outline of the plate. Cut out the paper circle and widen the center hole a few millimeters. We put it on the spinel and press it down against the camera with the plates. It will act as a white reflective backing to enhance the vibrancy of the colors.
Having positioned the background, make sure that the spindle can rotate freely. If it cannot rotate freely, expand the center hole of the background.
Step 10: Install the Hall Sensor on the Hard Drive
An oscilloscope is ideal for checking a sensor, but a voltmeter can do the job just as well. Make sure the sensor is excellent at transmitting the signal with high accuracy when the magnet passes by.
Install the sensor onto the hard drive screw.
Step 11: power, RTC, buttons
Nutrition:
Since the clock needs a lot of current to power it (for the motor and microprocessor) I used LM2596 5V 3A.
Let's put together a simple LM2596 power supply circuit and a few other components.
We use 12 V to power the LEDs (they will burn with maximum brightness), and for the microcontroller and the motor - 5 V.
Buttons:
The project used a 5 position switch. You can find more detailed information about this switch in the photos. This switch is quite compact, so you can easily make a PCB for it. It has 10 contacts, including 4 Common contacts, two - Center and four for control in other directions (right, left, up, down).
In this switch, press the center button to set Set / OK, right to move to the setting, left to move to the previous level, up to increase time / date / month, and to decrease down.
Real time clockReal Time Clock(RTC):
We will use DS1307 as the RTC. Due to its low cost, ease of installation and reliability, it can work for several years, thanks to the battery. As long as it's powered by a battery, the DS1307 will keep ticking merrily, counting down the time, even if the clock is unplugged or reprogrammed.
Step 12: BLDC motor controller
TDA5140AT is designed to control BLDC motor. We will develop a scheme in accordance with the manufacturer's technical documentation.
When in use, the motor can stop rotating and make “EK EK EK…”. The microcontroller chip will also heat up after this action. The solution is to add a filter capacitor close to the IC's power pins.
Step 13: schematic
The diagram was developed and saved in .pdf format.