This week we worked on a group project. My group decided to make a tidal clock, which we decided would be a clock that represents time in columns of water. There will be 3 columns, 1 for hours, minutes, and seconds. Here is what it might look like.
People in previous years have made projects that use capacitive sensing to tell water height, we will use this method to monitor the height of water in a column, and fill/drain it accordingly.
Out primary materials are:
-acrylic
-pipes
-solenoid valves
-tank fittings
-water pump
-plywood
Most of these materials will come from hardware stores, and mcmaster. The solenoids were sources from
zorotools
The acrlyic boxes will be made by us, which turns out to be a non trivial task. Lots of attention needs to be paid to the edge of the acrylic (cut using a special plastic blade on a table saw). Once you have good cuts, it is simply a matter of patience and carefull application of weld-on (which is much harder than it sounds).
Other than making the physical clock itself, we need to make controller boards for each of the columns, and a central controller to talk to them.
This is a quick sketch of how the plumbing will be hooked up for each of the columns.