Electromechanical Stepper Clock: Part 1 - First Steps

This project has been on want to do list for quite some time. I know most of the electromechanical moving clock projects end up using servo motors but they are too loud for the room I want to use this clock in. As luck would have it I found these very quiet unipolar 5V stepper motors for just ~$1.40 a piece, which for a full 4 digit 7 segment clock requiring 28 motors would cost ~$40 just for the motors. I can definitely work with that, so I snapped a bunch up along with darlington array drivers and some shift registers. My plan is to design a serial driver and build a single digit as a proof of concept before making the whole clock. First step though is figuring out how I'm going to home all these motors preferably without having a bunch of sensor switches ...

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Special thanks to Eric Skiff for freely providing the music used in this video off his album Resistor Anthems. His music can be found at http://ericskiff.com/music/

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