mosivers

This is what I did for my other thermochromic projects where the heater traces were directly etched on the PCB. I think in this case the heat is mainly conducted by the foil itself.

The manufacturer recommends keeping the foil away from UV light. I have been running my thermochromic temp.&humidity display indoors for over a year now and I don't see any degradation of the sheet.

Thanks. The color change indeed depends on the ambient temperature. In my previous project I adjusted the heating time according to the measured temperature. In this case I am thinking about a Webserver based UI that let's you adjust the heating time and duty cycle

Very nice! Great to see this coming all together.

So here is how it looks completed with black letters. Think I am gonna keep it this way.

Thanks, I am glad you like it. Wouldn't have happened without your mechanical seven segment display. How is the clock version coming along?

Yes, I already made a test print for that.

Are you sure both Peltiers are in the correct orientation and the thermal paste is spread evenly?

Cool. Looking forward to the pictures. If you still need the 3d printed tube holder just send me a PM. Alternatively, there are also 3D printing services like 3Dhubs.

If you use an electric field it needs to be inside the jar to remove stray ions. I would not be too worried about accidentally igniting the gas as the chamber will not create sparks. But the chamber also works without high voltage if you want to keep it extra safe. Lowering the pressure inside the chamber might have a negative effect on the visibility of the tracks due to the reduced ionization density. PC instead of glass will work fine since it is compatible with isopropyl alcohol.Have fun with the build.

Hi Oliver,I am glad that you like the clock.The font for the letters is Taurus Mono Stencil (bold).We also have an improved version 2 but the whole build instructions are not yet online. I will contact you directly.

Glad you worked things out by yourself.Btw, I recently found that the TP4056 module is actually what limits the output current, not the step-up module as suspected first.

Hi there,you say in your tube 1 cps equals 0.66 mr/h. That means 1 cpm equals 0.011 mr/hso in the code you should write rate_mr_h = rate_cpm*0.011.With normal background radiation you should get values of about <1 mR/h

It was Keratherm KP12. You can see it in the picture of step 2

I will write you a private message to help with the debugging

Its probably going to be my next project

To solder the LEDs I found that its easiest to first tin the solder pads on one side of the PCB then hold the LED in place with tweezers and attach it by remelting the solder. I hope you manage to get the kit working. Just let me know if there are any problems.

Wow, congratulations. I did not think that somebody would actually attempt to remake this. The black frame looks nice. I would love to see a video too.

Thank you.In my first instructable I also used copper etching to make glass PCBs. The advantage is that you can make much smaller tracks. There are adhesives which easily survive the etching.

Glad that you like the design.You are right, the alcohol vapor is flammable and therefore dangerous.I don't think that it can shatter the glass dome when ignited but I obviously have not tried.I used a glass dome because plastic might degrade over time when constantly exposed to isopropanol.

That is a good point, I also thought about just using heaters. However, the peltiers were not that expensive (~ 2 EUR/pc) and I wanted some quick way to change the color of the segments back to black. Also you could operate the display at ambient temperatures above 29°C where the color change starts.

Thank you. I have to calculate the costs and will add them later to the instructable, it should be around 200 EUR.

Thank you. You are correct, the peltiers will heat or cool the copper segments depending on the polarity of the applied voltage. The fans are just used to prevent the backplate from heating up too much over time.

I have used the PCA9685 in a previous project. I will check out the SX1509 as well. Reducing the amount of components and wiring would be nice

I am excited to see, keep me posted.

If it gets too hot or cold outside the heating/cooling power of the peltiers will probably not suffice to completely change the color of the foil. One would also have to add a weather proof housing for the electronics.

Hi Curtis,reaching -20°C is not bad but you probably need to go a bit lower.What kind of CPU cooler are you using?You should get one with heat pipes like the one I used.Is there an option to add a second fan to the CPU cooler?Also maybe check that you used enough thermal compound.

Sorry for the late reply. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to make you one because of other ongoing projects. I strongly encourage you to build your own version using the published instructions.

Thank you. The total costs should be below 50 EUR so it definitely affordable.

Thank you.1. The "L" and some of the other letters are not used for displaying the time but just to fill gaps.2. The words can spell the current time in steps of five minutes3. The round circles display the minutes4. Words do repeat every 12 hoursI suggest you also have a look at some of the other instructables for "standard" word clocks this should make things more clear

Thank you. Actually, we bought about 120 servos and all of them were working fine.

Yes, it would definitely be easier and probably also cheaper but the point was to come up with an innovative, complicated design. Also the effect would certainly not be as cinematic when using a display.

When the servos are moving quickly they are quite noisy so this is probably not a clock to hang in your bedroom. You can hear it in the video at 00:19https://youtu.be/ZvBI-v3uBo8?t=19

I never noticed this subtle difference in language but you are of course correct ;-)About the power consumption, I did not measure this for the complete clock but only for a single servo. I expect the most current to be drawn during the display effect where all servos are moved back simultaneously. The current of a single servo in this case was about 50 mA. So the total power consumption of the servos should be around 114 x 0.05 A x 5 V = 28.5 W plus another estimated 114 * 0.02 A * 5 V = 11.4 W for the LEDs, i.e. the 50 W power supply we are using should suffice.

Thanks for the praise and the advice. I have some spare servos and can of course always purchase new ones. The more complicated thing will be to unmount and exchange them, so I just hope they will last for some time. Also the clock is currently not running 24/7 but only switched one when needed.

Thank you. So far (luckily) no one has asked us to replicate this ;-) In this case I would prefer to point people to the instructions and encourage them to build their own version. We definitely like to keep the project non-commercial.

Thanks. I also thought about making the backplate from transparent acrylic. It would be nice to be able to see all the components from the back.

I have not tried to bend the particle tracks using a magnetic field. It is probably not possible to generate a field that is strong enough to visibly bend the tracks from muons or alpha particles but it may be possible for low energy electrons.