Stepper Motor to Run Mechanical Clock

[Eebel]

Hi,

I am 3D printing a small steam punk analog clock with gears to drive the hands. The gears are about 55 mm (2 inches-ish) in diameter and their shaft are mounted on 22mm ballbearings. I want drive the gears and I think a stepper motor would do the trick. I want the whole thing to be battery powered and fairly lightweight as it is going inside a hat. I was guessing I could use a Trinket or Trinket pro to run a stepper motor, but I know I need some sort of interface between the trinket and the stepper motor. As an added feature, I was thinking about adding some LED lights to pulse at 1 second intervals to indicate the passing of time (maybe a Neopixel ring or similar?)

Could you recommend some hardware that would work for this project?

Thanks,

Tim

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[adafruit_support_bill]

I would recommend one of the Feather processors with the Motor Wing. https://www.adafruit.com/product/2927
One issue with stepper motors in portable applications is that steppers are not very efficient. The good news is that your clock probably will not require a lot of 'holding torque', so you can conserve some power by releasing the holding current between 'ticks'.