Remote control wall clock??

Massey28694

Active Member
Hey all, hope everyone is having a great day! Community theatre here. We are putting on “Who’s on First” and the director would like to have a wall clock with hands that can be reset to 8 o’clock for the beginning of each scene. I am scratching my head and have not found a good solution yet. Anyone have an idea on how I might construct or find such an animal? Was thinking of mounting a clock over a hole in the flat so stagecrew could maybe “reset” it, but they would need to see the clock face to be accurate. All thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!
 
One of the questions that pops to my mind is: do the minute and/or hour hands need to make a 360º+ cycle? If not, you could install small pin stops into the face of the clock, that would not be very visible from house, particularly if painted the same color as the clock facade. The pin stop would only need to be tall enough to stop the hand from moving past that point; then you could train your hands to “reset” the clock by turning the knob until it stops from bumping up against the stop.

Of course, this won’t work if the clock hands are expected to make more than one cycle around.

My other idea is a motorized servo, whose digital start/stop points can be set via a Raspberry Pi, or perhaps even more simply, depending on the motor. If the clock’s setting system is only one knob, then you could even just program a servo motor to turn X number of turns back to reset; you could also program it to fast forward if you wanted to simulate the passing of time.
Just a few ideas!
 
There are various master clock systems used (or formerly used) in schools, businesses, etc. where some central controller would signal all the clocks to readjust to a central time. Repurposing one of them might do what you want, or be a start to doing it. My observation has been that many places these days are doing without clocks on the walls, or else just using normal quartz clocks and relying on human intervention to keep them more or less synchronized.

Here's a currently produced line of such clocks (by a company known as Masterclock, even), which would be pretty straightforward to work with but whose price new seems to fall into the "if you have to ask, you don't want to know" category. If you're lucky you might be able to hunt some used ones down.
 
Hey all, hope everyone is having a great day! Community theatre here. We are putting on “Who’s on First” and the director would like to have a wall clock with hands that can be reset to 8 o’clock for the beginning of each scene. I am scratching my head and have not found a good solution yet. Anyone have an idea on how I might construct or find such an animal? Was thinking of mounting a clock over a hole in the flat so stagecrew could maybe “reset” it, but they would need to see the clock face to be accurate. All thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!
@Massey28694 Simple is / can be good. Your decent looking clock on the patron's side / a circle drawn and numbered with a Sharpy on the back side of your flat; from my side of Donnie's wall it's working for me.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 

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