It is no secret that we're fascinated by clocks at Akafugu. We're also big fans of the hugely popular Discworld series by the venerable Sir Terry Pratchett.

Lord Vetinari is one of the many recurring characters in the series. He is a powerful man, and the ruler of the biggest city on Discworld, Ankh-Morpork.

He is in possession of a very strange clock: It ticks irregularly but still keeps accurate time. It hangs in his waiting room, and is designed to be unnerving for the people who are waiting to meet him.

We've turned this concept into an easy to solder electronics kit!Available now in our store, bundled with a wall clock to modify!

The concept and firmware is based on a design by Simon Inns, and everything is released asopen source hardware

Kit contents

The Vetinari Clock comes as an easy to solder kit with everything you need to create your own clock that ticks randomly, but still keeps accurate time!

The kit comes with a small PCB and all required parts, that you will solder. Also included is a medium-sized wall clock, that you will disassemble and modify, and then connect to the completed PCB board.

You will need to supply two AA batteries yourself. It will run for several months off a set of alkaline batteries.

PS: As of January 2014 we are shipping the Vetinari Clock with a new clock mechanism. The PCB and rest of the components are unchanged, but the firmware has been slightly updated to work better with the new clock mechanism.

Caveats:

• The vetinari clock board is run by the same kind of 32kHz crystal typically found inside simple analog clock mechanism, so expect a similar level of accuracy.

• Modifying the clock mechanism may destroy it if done improperly (such as being reckless when opening it up so that some parts are damaged).