Run 100yr old school clock

[lazyoldjack]

When I was 15, I rescued the clock from the school hall when it was replaced with a new electric clock. It was one of numerous clocks in the school that were run by a master clock, all on a loop circuit with a current pulse every 30 seconds (that's how they all stayed in sync).

At the time, I built a TTL divider circuit driven by a crystal to run it, but it was rather inaccurate, and that's how it stayed for nearly 50 years. Then I used Micro Python on an ESP32 to run it and it was accurate, except when Micro Python kept falling off the wi-fi or having some other problem, which was far too often...

So, I was looking for a better solution when I discovered Toit. I re-wrote my program in Toit and it's been pretty amazing ever since, even keeping time when subjected to multiple power cuts, internet outages, router re-boots etc. by storing the current position of the hands using MQTT.

Although I am not a very good programmer, I do find Toit relatively easy to use and I certainly think it's one of the most readable languages.

The program etc. is here: https://github.com/lazyoldjack/wallclock

Boring video of clock advancing one click is attached: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/20986290/181356846-fd02be39-4540-4476-a8c5-ceb5668ea5b2.mp4

I hope someone finds this vaguely interesting or useful (acknowledgement to Andreas Speiss for this line!)

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