Drinking Bird Clock

This "Hours Only" Drinking Bird Clock project is an excerpt from my iPad app, "How to Make a Science Fair Project."  The hour--in binary--is determined by the motion of the birds.  A moving bird is a "one," and a still bird is a "zero."  From left to right, the birds represent, "eight, four, two, one."

This is intended to be a simple way to get "into" microcontrollers.  No soldering is required, only wire wrapping and twisting wires together.  The electrical work is primarily done on the breadboard, so things are just "pushed" into place. 

Step 1: Parts

Parts List

 

 

(1) 12 inch x 12 inch Clear Acrylic Plexiglass Sheet—1/2 inch thick   estreetplastics.com

(4) Transistors, 2n2222a  #38236  jameco.com

(4) Drinking Birds #DB-100  teachersource.com

(4) Machine Screws, 6-32 x 3/8 inch  local hardware or amazon.com

(1)Wire jumper, 2 inch long  #126360  jameco.com

(1)Wire jumper, 4 inch long  #126342  jameco.com

(1)Breadboard, 3.25 inch x 2.125 inch  #20601  jameco.com

(1)Wire wrap wire, red  30 awg  #22631  jameco.com

(1)Wire wrap wire, blue 30 awg  #22542  jameco.com

 (1) Microcontroller, mbed lpc 1768  #568-4916-ND  digikey.com

(4) Resistors, 10 ohm, 3 watt  #PPC10W-3JCT-ND  digikey.com

(1) Power supply, 5 volt, 3 amp  #271-2583-ND  digikey.com

 

 

Tools you may not have

 

(1) Wire wrap tool  #236785  jameco.com

(1) Wire stripper  #175098  jameco.com

(1) Voltmeter  #1536843  jameco.com

 

 

Misc.  electrical tape, hook and loop fastener (tape)

Comments

[J-Five]

I think someone has too much time on their hands.

[stevemoseley]

While I'm not great at telling binary time, you just gotta love the birds. Great concept.

[biospot]

I was quite impressed by this. I have a binary clock and it makes me think in binary to read it. Very good mental exercise.
the problem is you have to think in binary to tell the time. I think it would be better if you could set it up so one bird will tell the hours, one the minutes and one the seconds by the number of bounces. That will make people sit and watch it to count them. That will be even more entertaining.... :-)

Or, if you have this running from an app, how about having different birds bounce depending on the weather forecast. You could change the look of the birds for each weather type. One could wear sunglasses, one could have rail coat, or rain hat, and another could have coat, etc. That would be fun also.

Anyway this would be fun, but I am afraid it would take up too much space at my house to be truely usefull. Still good idea and great instructable.

[ParanoidPilot]

Excellently daft project! I've written some mbed code that allows the use of your instructable as an actual clock. Since I have neither an mbed nor a set of drinking birds, I think you'd make better use of it than I will. PM me with either an email address to send the code to, or I'll put it on dropbox and send the link?
Jordan

[Gunther45]

Kinda of hard to use it as a clock. But I love Drinking Birds so A+++. Didn't know a resister would put that much heat out to change the birds. A larger scale project maybe even incorporating the time machine fountain would be interesting.

[campingfriends]

cool!

[wilgubeast]

This just blew my mind. I love those little drinking birds, and I thought that they couldn't get any better. But they did! Everything's better with a microcontroller. Plus, it tells time. In binary. Great work.

You should consider entering it into the Clocks Challenge.

[MikeTheMaker]

Thanks! I'm always encouraged when people enjoy my "near useless" contraptions.