For anyone who doesn’t know, a clock movement is the mechanism that causes the hands of an analog clock to move around the clock face. The “with pendulum” part means that it also swings a weight back and forth to act as a fancy second hand:
Now, there exist clock movements that are “smart” and are network enabled to adjust the time automatically. I’m also okay with an atomic movement. The idea is to adjust the clock twice a year for DST. However, I am having a difficult time (no pun intended) finding a smart/atomic movement that also supports a decorative pendulum.
I was hoping to enlist y’all’s help to see if one exists and where I might find it.
Edit: add comments about atomic clock movements.
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.
That’s true for mechanical clock movements, but I think OP is looking for a quartz movement that includes a simulated pendulum for aesthetic purposes, which isn’t particularly uncommon, unless your circles include a lot of antique enthusiasts, people who inherited an old grandfather clock, or people who just really dig mechanical clocks (and I won’t knock that, I certainly think they’re neat) odds that a lot of clocks you’ve seen with a pendulum are that type, powered by a AA battery and stuffed into a fancy wooden case
Clockwork is definitely fascinating. One of my fond childhood memories was taking apart an antique clock my dad got as a project - he was never able to put it back together and must have been so pissed.
While I could get behind that as a diy project, I have too little motivation on this one to prioritize the time
Old-school clockwork is very interesting, I get that.
I just have no personal desire to try to build something like that, lol. Then again, due to a neurological issue, I have slight tremor.
Working on laptops can be difficult some days. Clockwork gears? Eesh.
Here ya go: https://www.ebay.com/itm/176632637521
Be it WiFi or atomic, being able to automatically adjust the time (daylight savings) is more than “purely decorative”; at least to me. Until the PtB come to their senses and abolish DST, it’d be one less clock I’d have to adjust twice a year.
As for the rest of it, thank you. I mean that. I love knowing how things work and how they came to be.
Fwiw v clocks don’t need to have WiFi to auto adjust for dst. Just being date-aware and having a method to configure dst is all it takes.
I used to think this too. Now I have a programmable porch light that adjusts the time on the wrong week, because it does change. Not too big a deal for a porch light, but would be if I had to rely on the time. This really needs to be something that gets updated