Hello Russ,

The idea of keeping a mechanical item in motion is fairly old. There are Pendalum clocks which used mechanical switches on each extreme to turn on coils to keep it moving. These clocks eventually wear out because of mechanical wear.

About 1950 a fellow out in the sticks of Siberia came up with the concept of winding two coils one on top of each other. One of these coils was used for sensing when a magnet passed over it and the other coil was used to induce electrical energy into the mechanical movement to keep it in motion.

Leaving it to the military to continue the evolution they designed an extremely accurate clock source and gave it away to the public for free. This being the Global Positioning System (GPS). By purchasing older GPS receivers [2] and extracting this clock source you can control a mechanical clock [1] that uses the same principle as rotating two balls 180 degrees apart from each other

The below was a project I did a while back using a AT89C2051.

[1] http://i6.ebayimg.com/06/i/08/c0/e5/f2_1.JPG (Kundo clock)
[2] http://i5.ebayimg.com/06/i/08/98/c4/a5_1.JPG (GPS receiver)

Regards,

Charles Bannister

Kundo clock

GPS Receiver