Become An Office Hero By Making One Of These Time-Bending, Lunch-Lengthening Clocks


Our lunch breaks have seemed downright luxurious this week, your coworker observes. You agree. Then you explain why: this diabolical clock, which speeds up 20% at 11am and slows down 20% at 11:48, adding 12 precious minutes to your lunchtime.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t change time. But you can do the next best thing: changing the office clock! Over at Instructables, user Randofo has full instructions for building a clock that will increase your lunchtime by 20%. At 11:48am real time, the clock will display 12:00—office chow time—and it’ll be back in sync at 1:00pm real time when your 1:12 lunch break ends. The stuff you’ll need?

(x1) Standard wall clock

(x1) Adafruit DS1307 Real Time Clock Kit

(x1) Arduino (w/ATMEGA168 DIP chip)

(x1) Extra ATMEGA168 chip with Arduino bootloader installed (see last step)

(x2) BC547 PNP transistors

(x2) BC557 NPN transistors

(x1) 28 pin socket

(x2) 22pF capacitors

(x1) 16mhz crystal

(x1) 1K resistor

(x1) 7805 regulator

(x1) 4 pin socket

(x1) 9V battery and connector

Of course, this really only works if your entire office’s lunch schedule is pegged to a single clock. If you make this and use it as your personal one, you just end up looking like the guy who leaves early for lunch every day. BUT hey, whatever, no one said being the office hero was going to be easy. [Insctructables]


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