Stopping and starting a pendulum clock with an Arduino.

The purpose of this simple build is to stop the pendulum clock from ringing every hour during the night. At about 10 in the evening the pendulum stops, and it starts again at 10 in the morning. The electronics is simply a micro servo driven directly from an Arduino Leonardo.

The idea was inspired by this video http://youtu.be/FZ_Zd7TeMg0. This design is using a stepper motor rather than a servo, and is admittedly a better design. Nevertheless, my prototype works, and it does the job. Before attempting to build a similar device, you should read the discussion on hackaday.com regarding whether starting and stopping the clock every day is harmful for the mechanism or not. Your mileage may vary.

It is worth noting that this is a build I did a couple of years ago, and the Arduino Leonardo used in the project is now used in  a completely different project. In other words, the above video is all that remains of the small project. However, I might build a new one in the future, since it was very helpful in keeping the house quiet during nighttime.