3D Printed Mantel Style Auto Correcting Clock With Chimes and Daylight Savings Time

myminifactory

The "3D Printed Mantel Style Clock" is a unique analog clock that combines the classic look of a mantel clock with the modern styling of a bakelite radio. Featuring electronic chimes, this clock synchronizes hourly with NTP time servers over wifi and also includes optional daylight savings time and battery backup. You can view a video of the clock in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzkRTk0Pcbo. The clock's design incorporates an Adafruit Feather ESP32 for precise time keeping, along with an Adafruit Feather Music Maker driving twin 1.5-inch speakers for chimes and a stepper motor / stepper motor controller for displaying hours and minutes using analog clock hands. The clock software utilizes two CPU cores in the ESP32, executing setup and loop functions on core 1 while tasks for homing, updating, mp3 startup, and playback execute on both core 0 and core 1. This architecture enables simultaneous timekeeping and display updating with audio chimes, using a 1Hz ESP32 interrupt. If power is lost, the optional battery backup keeps the clock running during short outages. When wifi becomes available and power is restored, the clock will return to its correct time if the battery backup is not used. The clock's chimes, stored as individual mp3 files on a micro SD card inserted into the music maker, were inspired by an antique clock inherited from my wife's father after his passing. I attempted to reproduce the mechanical sounds created by the clock into mp3 chimes based on the time of day. The clock software transfers one of these mp3 files to the music maker via an ESP32 SPI bus. Since each chime resides as an individual mp3 file on the micro SD, you can load any desired mp3 file for the chimes. The daylight savings time feature is optional and is set up at compile time. When enabled, the clock will wind forward one hour on a user-programmable start day and backward one hour on a user-programmable end day. As usual, I probably forgot a few files or other details, so please don't hesitate to point out any mistakes you find. The clock was designed using Autodesk Fusion 360, sliced with Cura 3.5.1, and printed in PLA on an Ultimaker 2+ Extended and an Ultimaker 3 Extended.