Blog post on fixing Portobello's 1877 police-station clock hits Hacker News
A volunteer's account of resetting a Victorian clock tower's mechanism for a newly community-owned building gains traction online.
What to know
- Community group Action Porty bought Portobello's disused 1877 police station using Scottish Land Fund money and is restoring it.
- Volunteers found the original Victorian gear mechanism still driving the clock, alongside a 2001-era PIC microcontroller controlling the chime.
- Resetting the time was solved by disengaging a pawl and turning the shaft by hand; fixing the chime proved more complicated and the article cuts off mid-explanation.
- The blog post, originally published in April 2026, gained renewed attention on Hacker News in September 2026, reaching both the front page and 'Best' list.
Blog author (pointinthecloud.com) Volunteer and blog authorAction Porty Community organisation, building ownerAuthor's friend Contact who initiated the clock-fixing visit
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Story reaches Hacker News's 'Best' list and spreads via Mastodon bots
The post advanced to Hacker News's Best feed with 238 points and 53 comments, and automated Mastodon accounts (newsyc200, newsyc250) reposted links to the article and its HN discussion thread.
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My first thought was it'll be a lot easier to maintain if they put some sandpaper-like grip tread on those wooden ladder/stair steps. It comes in self-adhesive rolls, you peel and stick. Huge safety improvement for very little cost.Without modifying anything intrusive to the mechanism, a cheap way of monitoring to make sure it's still running OK…
2 more of the top 3 · 8 posts in this stretch
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The clock machinery isn't really doing much any more. This clock no longer needs winding, and it looks like the weights are gone. There's a small motor powering the time train. That's the little one at the upper right. The pendulum is still in use, but if they used a synchronous motor and a toothed belt, the pendulum and escapement would be…
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> Without modifying anything intrusive to the mechanism, a cheap way of monitoring to make sure it's still running OK would be to install a low cost PoE IP camera mounted in such a way that it's aimed at the gear mechanism then feed its video into something like Frigate. As cheap as $75 for a camera, some cat5e cable and staples to take the cable…
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Blog post surfaces on Hacker News and reaches the front page
Months after publication, the post was submitted to Hacker News, climbing to a score of 310 with 70 comments and appearing on the site's front-page RSS feed.
“Can you help keep Portobello on time? Action Porty has recently bought the Police Station for the community, but we can't work out how to change the time on the clock tower!”
— Author's friend, Message to blog author · source -
> The "Status" LED flashes some kind of code - long long, short short short. I assumed the number of flashes would correspond to the time but apparently not. We didn't have time to figure this out before we had to leave.long-long-short-short-short is 7 in morse code. They don't say what time they tried this or if it ever changed, though, so that's…
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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How fun! Once, after climbing around in a dusty old church attic like this, I had to head straight to the airport for a flight. Barely made it on because something in the dust kept flagging as dangerous. They were using a test strip on my backpack and clothing and analyzing it in some kind of machine. Stressful as I was already pressed for time!…
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The battery on that circuit looks very much like a backup battery we have connected to our house alarm.We moved in to the house in 2003 and that battery died this year, so I would imagine that it is already or will very soon die. That said, if it's a backup battery and the electricity supply is stable then it may not make any difference.
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background
Author finds a 2001 circuit board wired into the 1877 chime mechanism — Investigating why the chime couldn't be adjusted, the author traced switches and a motor to a control box containing a PIC 16F628 microcontroller with a suspected 2001 date code, relays, a power supply and a battery-charging circuit, making the chime fix harder than resetting the time.
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background
Volunteers manually reset the Portobello clock tower — Responding to a friend's request on behalf of Action Porty, the author climbed into the disused police station's clock tower, located the drive shaft and pawl mechanism, and reset the hands by hand after disconnecting the motor.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by HN Best, 13h ago · also HN Frontpage
What people are saying 5 voices from 1 site · best of 11 · verbatim
- Yesterday
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Repairing a clock tower at a police station? This gave me major Resident Evil 2 vibes."It's gold-plated. It looks like a large clock cog."
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Don’t need a camera just a microphone would do, since the chime is triggered by the hour wheel. As long as that’s turning on time everything else will be kosher.
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Wild seeing local stuff on HN. My dad used to work in that police station, probably the first (and only) HN story I’ll send him.
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I love this. Any advice how to get involved in my local community in a similar way? I'd be so into doing some community project during my free time.
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If you enjoyed this, here's Fred Dibnah exploring Big Ben and discussing some of the engineering details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi1cqR1bJC4Fred Dibnah was a treasure. If you enjoyed 5 minutes of Big Ben, here's an hour of his day job in heavy industrial steeplejacking - "The Ups and Downs of Chimneys"