Show HN: Desk clock with rotating Earth showing real-time day/night cycles

1 lludo 0 9/5/2025, 10:17:35 PM atelierludo.com ↗

Hey HN! I'm an engineer who's always been interested in watches/clocks, so I recently started building in public. I'm creating desk clocks inspired by traditional aesthetics but with modern precision tech.

Currently prototyping two models:

- Type 1 — Tri-Date: Features a geometric triangular date layout with big date on a "squircle" dial (perpetual calendar).

- Type 2 — Planétarium: Has a suspended Earth model that rotates every 24 hours on a real 23.5° tilt, showing which hemisphere is in daylight and how this changes through seasons.

Technical stack summary: - ESP32-S2 with ESP-IDF (not Arduino) - High precision stepper motors - TMC2208 controllers for silent operation - DS3231 RTC with WiFi sync - Hall sensors for precise positioning - Custom PCB design

Everything is hand-assembled in my garage workshop - from wooden cases to precision gear trains. Full vertical integration from concept to assembly (one-person operation).

Currently in prototyping phase, planning Kickstarter once technical challenges are solved. Following the journey: @atelier_ludo

Would love HN feedback!

Show HN: Open-sourcing our text-to-CAD app (github.com)

Show HN: Writing Arabic in English (sherifelmetwally.com)

Show HN: Swimming in Tech Debt (helpthisbook.com)

Show HN: Claudio – Audio Input for Claude.ai (earthpilot.ai)

Show HN: CompareGPT – Spotting Hallucinations by Comparing Multiple LLMs

Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type (enda.sh)

Show HN: Stroboscopic Instrument Tuner (github.com)

Show HN: I built a public and open llms.txt endpoint for every domain (llms.page)

Show HN: A roguelike game that runs inside Notepad++ (github.com)

Show HN: File-based ticket management with Git-like commands (github.com)

Show HN: I made a simple lead magnet delivery without techsetup (freebie.email)

Show HN: I built FlipCards – a flashcard app with variations to improve learning (flipcardsapp.vercel.app)

Show HN: Tallyit.co/coparents – Split costs with your baby dady (tallyit.co)

Show HN: Wormhole for Perplexity Comet (blog.gingerbeardman.com)

Show HN: A Map of All YC Companies (5,300 Startups by Batch and Location) (yc.foundersaround.com)

Show HN: A small browser game (PC only) built with Phaser 3 (cubic-zombies.pages.dev)

Show HN: Webapp to organize search for properties when renting/buying (dash.collabnest.app)

Show HN: Pedantify – Simple CLI for proofreading text files via LLM (npmjs.com)

Show HN: Moribito – A TUI for LDAP Viewing/Queries (github.com)

Show HN: Spectral Indexing for Vector Search (tuned.org.uk)

Show HN: LightCycle, a FOSS game in Rust based on Tron (github.com)

Show HN: Entropy-Guided Loop – How to make small models reason (github.com)

Show HN: Shimmy – 5MB privacy-first, local alternative to Ollama (680MB) (github.com)

Show HN: Amber – better Beeper, a modern all-in-one messenger (useamber.app)

Show HN: Scrape Congressional Stock Trading (github.com)

Show HN: Quicknote.zip (Daily Micro Scratchpad) (quicknote.zip)

Show HN: Invocly – Convert PDF, DOCX, and TXT files into lifelike speech (invocly.com)

Show HN: My first Go project, a useless animated bunny sign for your terminal (github.com)

Show HN: Prototyper – AI design platform with its own compiler and runtime (getaprototype.com)

Show HN: Simple modenized .NET NuGet server reached RC (github.com)

Show HN: We built an open-source alternative to expensive pair programming apps (github.com)

Show HN: Spotilyrics – See synchronized Spotify lyrics inside VS Code (github.com)

Show HN: Provable Safety for AI Agents (sentinelops.xyz)

Show HN: Prompt-to-proof: reproducible LLM eval with hash-chained receipts (github.com)

Show HN: Comfyfile - Secure, Anonymous File Sharing with Auto-Expiry No Account (comfyfile.com)

Show HN: I built an AI that uses a metacognitive loop 2 solve invention problems (robw1se.substack.com)

Show HN: Terragon – Run Claude Code as a Background Agent (terragonlabs.com)

Show HN: Davia – A community platform to build, share, and edit applications (docs.davia.ai)

Show HN: Car Chomper – A tool to visualize car sizes (carchomper.com)

Show HN: Train yourself to handle a crying baby (cry-training.vercel.app)

Show HN: Neural Siege – a text-based experiment in resisting rogue AI persuasion

Show HN: Anonymous Age Verification (gist.github.com)

Show HN: SHAde – A tool that turns Git Commit Hashes into deterministic Art (github.com)

Show HN: Woomarks, transfer your Pocket links to this app or self-host it (woomarks.com)

Show HN: Built a civic issue certificate app in 1 hour (200k views) (civil-certificate.vercel.app)

Show HN: Tsuki – Lua 5.4 ported to Rust (github.com)

Show HN: Skada – Automate any workflow with a single prompt (skada.ai)

Show HN: rm-safely – A shell alias that moves files to trash instead of deleting (github.com)

Show HN: I built a deep research tool for local file system (github.com)

Show HN: Fine-tuned Llama 3.2 3B to match 70B models for local transcripts (bilawal.net)

Show HN: Desk clock with rotating Earth showing real-time day/night cycles

Comments (0)