Candle Oscillator Really Heats Things Up
As the timebase for a clock, almost anything with a periodic oscillation can be used. Traditionally, that meant a pendulum, but in our time, we’ve seen plenty of others. Perhaps none as unusual as [Tim]’s candle flicker clock, though.
Candles are known for their flickering, a property of the wick and the fuel supply that candle manufacturers have gone to great lengths to mitigate. If you bring several of them together, they will have a significant flicker, with a surprisingly consistent 9.9 Hz frequency. This is the timebase for the clock, with the capacitance of the flame being sensed by a wire connected to a CH32 microcontroller, and processed to produce the required timing.
We like this project, and consider it a shame that it’s not an entry in our One Hertz Challenge. Oddly, though, it’s not the first candle-based oscillator we’ve seen; they can even be turned into active electronic devices.
hackaday.com/2025/08/23/candle…
