Ask Lemmy

Um the idea of a pendulum in an old fashioned clock is that it is actually the clock's frequency reference. It's purely mechanical, no electricity or radios. The length of the pendulum determines the frequency (usually 1 hz). You can slide the weight up and down a little bit to adjust the speed. The spring unwinding gives the pendulum a little kick on every swing so the clock doesn't stop. You wind up the spring every so often so it doesn't unwind completely, and the swinging pendulum advances a little ratchet that moves the hands a little on every swing. If you lived in a town in the pre-electricity era, the local church would ring its church bells at noon, 3pm, etc. and you would use that to set or adjust your clock as needed. The church clock itself was directly or indirectly set using solar noon (as observed with a transit telescope or dipleidoscope) as a reference. Fancier pendulum clocks had various sorts of thermal compensation and could be very accurate. It was a highly developed technology that is now mostly forgotten.

Connecting wifi to this would be at best purely decorative. I guess it would be a cute hack but meh. You could look on hackaday.com which is full of projects like that. I've mostly found them kind of pointless, but that's just me being a grouch.

Aside from not needing to adjust the time, is there any particular reason it needs to be WiFi enabled?

Because that kind of feels like an overly complicated solution to a problem that was solved decades ago with "atomic" clock movements.

Which aren't actually atomic in any way on their own, but contain an antenna to pick up the signal from an NIST atomic clock to set the time (and I believe other countries and regions have their own equivalent if you're not in the US)

As far as finding a pendulum movement, I don't really know what is out there, but it may be another avenue for you to look into.

I don't really know what's out there, but FWIW, I'd point out that there is nothing functional about the coupling between the pendulum and the clock in such a movement, so if you could find a separate "pendulum swinger" you could perhaps use that with a regular DST capable movement.

~~Please edit your title in the form of a question. I almost removed this as spam. In fact, there's not a single question in your post, but I'm sure you're trying to ask one.~~

Thank you. Have a magnificent day.

I feel like you could do this with some arduino and a pendulum of your choice

Good timing on this question: thanks. I’m also trying to figure out how to have a mechanical looking clock that doesn’t need setting.

Unfortunately not enough to DIY, and chances are slim of finding an exact fit to my existing clock (I like the look but it’s actually an inexpensive plastic clock that I could replace if I Found something comparable or nicer).

I was surprised how few atomic clock options there actually were, and none sufficiently “retro”. WiFi seems even more limited, predominantly modern styles