The tides! Such a unique thing, because on Earth, we don’t just have oceans full of liquid water—we also have a big ol’ moon called Moon to pull them around. You might like to keep track of the tides; if so, this tide clock from [rabbitcreek] could come in handy.
The motions of the tides are moderately complex; it was in the late 19th century that Sir William Thomson figured out a reasonable method to predict the tides mathematically and with a mechanical contrivance of his own design. These days, though, you don’t need pulleys and ropes to build a tide clock; you can just use electronics for display and the NOAA API to get the information you need.
[rabbitcreek’s] build is based around the Xiao ESP32 S3, which is charged with using its Wi-Fi connection to query NOAA up-to-date tide height data. It then uses this information to drive the position of a servo, installed inside a 3D-printed housing. The servo rotates a little red Moon indicator around a central Earth, with our home planet surrounded by a stretched blue marker indicating the swelling of the tides as influenced by the Moon’s gravity.
If you’re a surfer or beach driver that’s always wanting to know the tidal state at a glance, this clock is for you. We’ve featured other tide clocks before, but never any projects that can actually influence the tides themselves. If you’ve figured out how to mess with gravity on a planetary scale, consider applying for a Nobel Prize—but do notify the tipsline before you do.
“we also have a big ol’ moon called Moon…” lol
She has many names in many cultures, Luna comes first.
My hack is to slow down a mechanical 12 hour clock to lunar position time. Take the minute hand off, hour hand is the tide. Up or down set it to correspond with local tide or just the position if visible.
Won’t work in at least one major port: Southampton has four high tides per day. The water takes a while to run round the Isle of Wight.
Didn’t realise So’ton had 4, but I suppose it’s logical as in Cowes we often get a double high tide.
Getting real time tide details is really handy when fossil hunting, I tend to use the BBC weather app (as long as i have signal)…
It uses online realtime tide data from coastal water level sensors? Why would water movement time make tide telemetry invalid?
Now to make a tide clock that uses local gravity for the calculation.