Servo Motor/ Like Clock Work

I have little background in any programming or hardware. I want to make a small servo turn a small shaft. I would like to be able to program the means to do this and be able to leave it alone until I have to replace the batteries. Replace batteries and let it go again.

The servo needs to rotate 30 degrees clockwise every hour. It needs to do this continually without any manual inputs until power is lost. I am placing this in an area that is too dangerous for humans to occupy. The purpose of this is to take away the current use of a manual hour clock and make it automated.

I am in the need of the hardware list and code along with any helpful directions. If someone would like to make a personal connection please reply on this thread and we may be able to work something out. I have a faboulous idea to help make the lives easier of my co-workers but do not have the knowledge nor the skills to do so.

It is hard to imagine why a clock won’t do, but the next best, most accurate and simplest approach would be to use a small synchronous motor. These are linked to the power line frequency and in most countries, that frequency is kept sufficiently accurate that clocks based on the line frequency will keep proper time.

You can buy 1 rotation per hour motors off the shelf here: herbach.com/Merchant2/mercha … ck_Depth=2

Those would need to be geared 12:1, but I suspect that you can buy a 1 or 2 rotation per day motor, and you are done.

For many people Jim’s suggestion is much better.

If for some reason that is not an option, I would suggest a DS1306 RTC “real time clock” from ebay (~$3-5) coupled with a stepper motor and a MCU (microcontroller unit.) If the torque required is greater than a simple NEMA17 can provide, then I would use a larger geared stepper motor with a micro-encoder.

The code is not insurmountable but there is a bit of code all of this will require. I am not sure but I think maybe the DS1306 is a 3.3V device, so you may want to use a 3.3V microcontroller like the 8Mhz arduinos. The main difficulty of the devices, like the DS1306 interfacing, time keeping, stepper motor control, are relatively abstracted to libraries but will still take some work to familiarize with.

I assume the reason a clock will not work is because this is in fact a mechanical need that is “like a clock” but with greater force requirements.