Build a fountain with three or more spouts. Have the water flow from them in time varying patterns (say, fountain 1->2->3->all off->3->2->1->all off->all on->repeat. This would probably require you also building an adder of some sort though.

Increment by fixed integer is very simple, it's how the machine counts days, weeks, months and years. I like the idea of a fountain, and it's actually how I'm planning to make the clock "year dial". A fountain that spouts water by statues made of materials corresponding to the months. Still need to get a hold of some felsite and slate, though. Might have to cheat a reaction.

Edit: There's really nothing to this design. Do you want me to post a description of how to build it? Requires 42 pumps and plenty of mechanisms for the basic year cycle.

Awesome ideas there! Here's how to build the clock:

Carve out four cyclical repeaters as per mrFake's model, linked earlier. You want two with 14 steps, for the day and year cycles, one with 8, for the week cycle and one with 6, for the month cycle. Each has to have its own power supply.

First, build the day cycle with 14 pumps. Only delay 12 of the steps, leaving two to be "skipped" over each cycle. This is the only step where you need to be concerned about build order, IE pumps->gears->plates.
Next, build the week cycle, and connect it to a "resistor", a room filled with enough gears to stop the entire repeater when connected. Connect it to the cycle with a single gear, then build a pressure plate in one of the skipped slots from the day cycle. This will effectively increase the week cycle by one each day cycle.

Repeat this for the 4-step month cycle and the 12-step year cycle. To synchronize the system, stop the day cycle with a lever for a few steps at a time until you're counting days properly, then connect levers to the three increment-by-one resistor chambers and set the correct day, week and month.

Edit: since there seems to be an interest, I uploaded the 40d16 save, since a demonstration movie would be extremely boring to watch

Wall of text warning.

Exactly. The plate is there, just not connected.

A DF day is exactly 1200 steps, which is why the day loop counts to 12. This means that the lowest amount of time you can measure is two hours, a single repeater step.

AHAHA! Thank you!

This was always the key piece of data I was missing when I wondered about how to make dwarven water clocks. Thank you!

Please put a how-to on the wiki once you're done. As to what to do with it, what I'd wanted was a system to shower all my dwarves on a regular basis (say, every seventh day). I'd also thought about making a system to shut off my water works in winter so that it wouldn't freeze solid.

edit: I have bookmarked this thread

I think I got the idea. Anyway, diagram time!

Spoilered for huge. Seriously.

Does that look like it could work? Also, I think it would be clearer if you named the Day cycle the Hours cycle (because it just is a cycle of hours), the Week cycle the Days cycle, the Month cycle the Weeks cycle and the Year cycle the Months cycle. It will also make your notes more logical.

Now, let's say you want an automated entrance. And it only opens from the 1st of Opal to the 10th of Opal. You need to link up the pressure plates of day one of the month and day two to an OR logic gate. The same goes for every pair of days. You'll be left with five pairs of days which activate when it's either of their pair. Then link up pairs of outputs. If you at one point have an odd number of outputs, just link the last one up to the higher tier. Continue to link them all up, until you only have one output left. Next, link this output to an AND logic gate, along with the pressure plate of the month you want the door/bridge/... to be opened. Link the output of the AND gate to a NOT gate and the output of that to the bridge. When it is OR the 1st OR the 2nd OR the 3rd... AND Opal, the bridge will NOT be toggled (meaning: open). If you want the bridge to be opened automatically in different months, link the months' pressure plates via OR gates until you only have one output left and link that with an AND gate to the output of the days, and then via a NOT gate to the bridge. If it wasn't clear: Diagram time!


That is the general way. Let's say you want to open the special foods stockpile in the week before and the week after your real life birthday. Or mine, in this example: 31/07, which corresponds to 28th Limestone (last day of the seventh month to make it easier/applicable to DF). The week before is the last week of Limestone and the week after is the first of Sandstone. This is a relatively easy example: I link week 4 to Limestone with an AND gate, and link week 1 with an AND gate to Sandstone. The output of those AND gates are linked to an OR gate (it's in either the last week of Ls OR the first week of Ss). The output of the OR gate is then linked to the door.

For a more complicated example, let's take the day I signed up here: 11/11 or 11th Opal. Again, the week before and after something has to happen. This means from 4th Op to 18th Op. Handily, week 2 (8th to 14th) is smack in the middle of the period. So we can link that one up directly to an OR gate. Then you link up the separate days with OR gates until you've only got one output left. This gets linked to the other input (the first comes directly from week 2) of an OR gate. Then link this with an AND gate to Opal and the output to something else.

BIG NOTE: I haven't tried any of this. It's all how I think it should work. It could be that it's all wrong. I'm going to test it myself, and hope it's all right. If somebody sees an error, please feel free to tell. This here is all FOR SCIENCE! and purely hypothetical. For me that is. There are others who've done one of these things. And both of these, but separately. I've done neither, and hope to do the combination of logic gates and a clock together. Anyway, if somebody already has done something like this and sees some fatal flaw in my plan, don't hesitate to tell me. Or just anybody who thinks he can help out.


... I think I overdid my post a bit. But I hope it was helpful. And correct. I think it is, but I'm not entirely sure.

EDIT: I made a bit of a mistake in my examples. I kind of forgot the way the clock itself worked: not with 28 days, but with 4 times seven days...
EDIT2: Corrected some mistakes regarding colour-coding and logic of the clock.
EDIT3: Made a mistake in the cycles: the pumps without a delay should be right next to each other (in case of the day and year cycles), and directly after the pressure plate which isn't linked to anything. I tried making it the way I had drawn it originally, but things went awry. The water went too fast for a couple of pumps and then it slowed back down. I'm fixing it, and hoping it will work. which it does. Victory!