8 ms·
Show HN: Fine Wordclocks: more than a time piece, they are a piece of art
- matt_the_bass 8y agoHi Everyone. I have a Show HN that is a little different than what’s typical. My side project is building word clocks. I’ve developed the entire physical item including the mechanical design, the manufacturing design, the electrical design, and the firmware. Moderator Dan saw this listed in my profile and suggested I share it. I was inspired to make my first word clock after stumbling upon a DIY design on hack-a-day[0]. I really liked the idea of a wordclock but felt that the designs I found online were too DIY or too modern metal and sterile. I wanted a design that was both elegantly styled and with a professional finish. My first word clock was given as a present to my parents and it still hangs in their home today. I made more clocks similar to that first design which I also gave out as gifts to friends and family. Later, I developed a simplified design that I donated to AS220, my local Providence artist group, where I periodically teach a word clock making workshop[1]. After a few years of producing word clocks for gifts and fun, I developed my first word clock which is for sale. It utilizes a combination of fine craftsmanship and clever electronics to produce a one of a kind piece of practical art. I’m proud of the fit and finish of my word clocks and want to share them with people who want more than just a utilitarian tool. I do all the fabrication myself in my basement. Now that I have the manufacturing process down, I’m ready to start marketing them. I’m promoting them as limited edition art pieces, not a mass market product. This first design is limited to 100 units. So far I’ve sold one unit on etsy[2] without any promotion whatsoever. So I’m hopeful that with a little promotion I’ll be able to sell 2-3 per month. I’m not really interested in turning this into a large scale business. I already do that for my day job. My intent with this is to continue to expand my creative output. It’s also a great excuse to acquire cool tools (aka toys) that I can teach my kids to use. Please let me know what you think and feel free to ask questions! [0] https://hackaday.com/tag/word-clock/ https://hackaday.com/tag/word-clock/ [1] http://industries.as220.org/the-wordclock http://industries.as220.org/the-wordclock [2] https://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks https://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks
- berbec 8y agoBeautiful design! I hope this takes off among those who can afford it, but I am unfortunately not among those.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoThank you! I'm constantly surprised at how many people spend an amazing amount of money on expensive TVs, cars, etc. Hopefully some of them will buy one of my clocks!
- Aloha 8y agoI'd want the ability to manually set the time, or point it at an NTP server of my choosing.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here, for simplicity, my design allows for timezone selection but for user simplicity, the time server is not selectable. I think your suggestions is quite valid for many of the HN readers, but not for that audience I'm targeting. thanks for your comment!
- Aloha 8y agoIt's valid to future proof your clock so it will be useable in the future.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoI agree. I’m working on a manually setting time option if no WiFi is available.
- monochromatic 8y agoVery cool. Any plans to sell kits or put DIY instructions online?
- masonic 8y agoWhy is "WiFi required"?
- thanatos_dem 8y agoProbably to keep the clock sync'd?
- thisacctforreal 8y agoMaybe a GPS receiver could provide that in a future version?
- codetrotter 8y agoYeah but GPS reception isn’t always awesome indoors. I’d hate to buy an expensive clock to have in my basement only to find that it relied on GPS and couldn’t receive the information it needed to sync itself.
- masonic 8y agoI'd just hate to see my word clock hacked over the Internet, like so many IoT devices, and start spelling out obscenities at me... or simply giving me the wrong time at a critical point.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago>or simply giving me the wrong time at a critical point The use of “ish” tells me this isn’t designed to be a high precision instrument.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. Correct! One of my earlier designs included the time "It's now" pseudorandomly every few days. I gave one of those to my father. One night he woke up unable to sleep, went downstairs, saw the clock and it said "It's now". He laughed as it was the one time he was actually curious what time it was. :)
- thanatos_dem 8y agoThese look awesome, but I cannot imagine spending $1,400 on a clock...
- bhhaskin 8y agoI agree. They look great, but I can't see the bill of materials being above $200-300. Quite the markup.
- seanp2k2 8y agoI get it; I'm guessing that this is a "I value my time at $60 per hour and each one takes 20 hours to make" type of situation, which unfortunately gets misunderstood ALL THE TIME in the art world. People will look at a one-of-one canvas painting and balk at a few thousand dollar price point, when in fact often times that price works out to under $10/hour for the artist. As a comparison, home construction rates are typically $90+/hr, and the craftsmanship that most laborers deliver for that (they're not usually the ones getting paid that much) is abysmal compared to something like this or almost all fine art. Basically, is it worth it TO YOU? I understand the logic behind trying to put together a BoM in your head, but also consider R&D time, tools (and the wear on them), time spent sourcing, finishing, final assembly, shipping, building an eCommerce site to sell these, advertising...there's a ton of cost outside of just the BoM, as many Kickstarter projects which never ship can attest to. Makers who have done any kind of mass production tend to understand this sort of thing, as do those who were able to hand-assemble a dozen of a thing, then had to scale it to a few thousand (read about electronic conference badges, for example). https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstarter-project-can-crash-and-burn-5482d7d33ee1 https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstart... is another account of this. Finally, it's art. Many luxury products have huge mark-ups of hundreds or thousands of percent (look up Luxottica for example...they make most of the plastic sunglasses that sell for >$100). Could YOU make a single one that is similar for less money? Probably, but that's not what you're paying for here. Most artists are not crazy greedy capitalists, but the ones who think through it enough to turn it into a longer-term successful venture tend to price things according to how much they need to make it worth their time to bother to produce them. /rant on behalf of all my artist friends who wish they could do art full-time but can't because it would never come close to paying the bills
- notus 8y agoThe price on those are insane for the small size, but they are beautiful
- stephen_g 8y agoWould you ideally have art priced by weight or by volume?
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. I loved your comment. Maybe I should think about how to make my clocks heavier!
- notus 8y agoIt's not about the weight, it is that a piece like doesn't really work at its current size.
- jvoorhis 8y agoI showed up to learn more about audio engineering. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock
- johnr2 8y agoYou beat me to it. Having used word clocks in audio engineering for many years, this is a new use of the term for me.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. Yup! Me too. I've been playing and recording music for decades before making these types of word clocks. It bugs me to about the naming overlap.
- phailhaus 8y agoI feel like if someone is going to spend $1,400 on a clock, it needs to last an extremely long time. But the "ish" sounds a bit childish, and I think the clock would feel a lot more solid and timeless without it. There's a kind of appeal to a clock that just gives you the general time, a good fit for places where you want to relax.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here, thanks for your comment! I may consider trying to develop a new design that uses a larger lexicon like some of my earlier pieces. I discuss some of the lexicon here https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=18953116 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=18953116
- jozydapozy 8y agoThis idea seems to be done before and seems copywrited as well: https://qlocktwo.com/en/ https://qlocktwo.com/en/
- Gys 8y agoThey even have a wrist watch. Wow. https://qlocktwo.com/en/qlocktwo-w/ https://qlocktwo.com/en/qlocktwo-w/
- general8bitso 8y agoYeah, how is this not infringement? Otherwise, we would see $79 mass-produced word clocks at Target.
- lvh 8y agoA word clock is a concept that requires patent protection, not a copyrightable expression.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoLots of people that have seen my work have said "you should patent that!" I don't see anything that is obviously patentable to my wordclock design or others that I've seen. IANAL but I do hold 4 patents (and other pending) in other domains so I have a little bit of experience.
- lvh 8y agoOh, sure: I was just clarifying that copyright doesn't help here. Honestly I think it'd be a silly patent? But USPTO grants lots of silly patents.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoahh, got it. Thanks for the clarification.
- jvdh 8y agoIf you don't want to spend $1400 on a clock, but still want to read time in words, there's another option. You can build it yourself for about a 20th of the cost: https://bitbucket.org/vdham/wordclock https://bitbucket.org/vdham/wordclock That one's in Dutch, but it's pretty easy to get a stencil in English and adjust the code.
- Lurkars 8y agoJust build my own from scratch as Christmas presents. Saw the orig. Qlocktwo 10 years ago and always thought: the logic is so simple, I build this on my own. The main problem is a professional looking front plate, but after discovering online services for cheap lasering a SVG file, I re-thought my idea. Pro tip: separate every LED, not just the words, because you can use the LEDs as two letter 8x5 segment display to show temperature or a running text. Just finished the clocks a few days ago, so project not documented yet, but will also publish my code, because with the segment letters I added some more functions than on the usual wordclock tutorials. Project hardware basics: * Arduino Nano (also tested Wemos D1 mini for implementing a control app via WLAN sometimes) * DS3231 RTC * LED strip WS2812b
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. Nice work! My first few clocks were holiday presents as well. I always like hearing about other people's creative stories. I'm sure the recipient will love it. /snark if they don't, then they don't deserve it! /end snark
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. Yes, there are whole bunch of DIY wordclocks. And I would encourage anyone that is interested in the challenge. That's how I started on this route. I've really enjoyed the process of figuring out how to manufacture these. To me that is an interesting challenge. I've only found one other "high end" word clock on the market. Personally, I don't like their aesthetics. So I decided to make my own. I realize that many people may not like my aesthetics. That's art and style. To each his/her own.
- 8y ago
- mlangenberg 8y agoIsn't there an equivalent to DCF77 in the states? It would allow people to skip the cumbersome WiFi setup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
- tridentlead 8y agoSee WWVB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB
- netsharc 8y agoHow is this not an ad?
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. It's an ad with a story and a Q and A. Just like all the other Show HNs. Isn't that why Show HNs have a separate section on the site?
- kaffeemitsahne 8y agoTo everyone commenting on the price: people regularly pay thousands of dollars for a wristwatch.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoOP here. Thank you for your support! I've actually been wondering if my pricing is too low.
- wieghant 8y agoIt's a cool project and I admire the attempt, however 1) It's been done before, it's not original 2) The cost is outrageous (I see you use more expensive materials, but it's not $1400 more expensive material) 3) Likely copyright infringement
- jozydapozy 8y agoI once made this on a rainy day: https://www.propra.nl/clock/ https://www.propra.nl/clock/ (dutch version: https://www.propra.nl/clock/?lang=nl https://www.propra.nl/clock/?lang=nl) Nice to run fullscreen or cast to your tv.