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[Xen0n]

or a caged goblin if you really want flesh in the mix - fill the bottom plate with magma, include the slower drop rate of the cage through the magma in the calculation, and you've got a clock that still kills stuff.

I like the idea with the goblin, but am worried that the 'pocket universe' that cages seem to contain would keep the goblin safe while in the magma. 

maybe we'll have to skip killing puppies but we can still get our clock

I'm scared of the slippery slope this may take us down.  Even with goblins we're starting to stray from the real heart and original vision of the project.  I know, I know, I was the first to suggest non-puppy murder, but I think for the sake of completeness we need to strive that the regular operation this deviceto involves killing some kind of animal.  If at all possible, the death of yet another puppy should herald the start of each Dwarven month. 

Really, would any of us feel like we truly succeeded, if we created a Dwarven device which accurately measured time but did NOT consistently and mercilessly slaughter innocent animals?  I fear that each time it tolled out the hour, some part of our souls would mournfully yearn: "A puppy should have died just now, but didn't."

[kaenneth]

That reminds me of my "Kitten of the Month Club" business idea.

Each month a new playful cute kitten arrives via express shipment, and you simply seal the old one in the enclosed plastic bag, and send it back via regular ground transport.

[Sphalerite]

Alternative idea:

Place the puppy on a pressure plate.  Have the pressure plate near the top of a large chamber that is slowly filling with magma.  When the magma reaches the puppy, it will die, un-triggering the pressure plate.  This will activate a mechanism that drains the magma from the chamber, and then drops a fresh puppy on the pressure plate, restarting the cycle.

It may be necessary to use a pump to remove the magma from the pressure plate tile so that a 1/7 pool of magma is not left behind.  Magma can take a long, random time to evaporate, so we cannot simply have a fixed delay before dropping another puppy.

The problem will come in developing a means to fill the magma chamber at a controlled, consistent rate.

[plynxis]

why not just put a puppy in a cage? magma doesnt kill creatures immediately always, so there isnt necessarily 100% predictability there either. as long as the cage AND the puppy melt in a time consistently lower than the refraction time, we're ok.

[FearfulJesuit]

Alternative idea:

Place the puppy on a pressure plate.  Have the pressure plate near the top of a large chamber that is slowly filling with magma.  When the magma reaches the puppy, it will die, un-triggering the pressure plate.  This will activate a mechanism that drains the magma from the chamber, and then drops a fresh puppy on the pressure plate, restarting the cycle.

It may be necessary to use a pump to remove the magma from the pressure plate tile so that a 1/7 pool of magma is not left behind.  Magma can take a long, random time to evaporate, so we cannot simply have a fixed delay before dropping another puppy.

The problem will come in developing a means to fill the magma chamber at a controlled, consistent rate.

Hmm.

That's certainly doable, we just need to figure out how to do it.

I think we can in fact get our puppy clock.

[Xen0n]

To sidestep for a moment, ideally whatever the final design is, it should be totally automatic and hands-free.  For supplying puppies, I've thought of one idea that may work.

Make a sealed room and pasture several breeding pairs of dogs, with enough room that infighting for the puppies isn't an issue.  Tweaking the number of breeding dogs may be required so that puppies are supplied at the same rate that they are being consumed by the clock.  Have 2x1 tile tunnel branching off from the room, with a Hatch, then a pressure plate.  The hatch should be channeled out beneath, like similar hatch traps, so while open, the pressure plate and breeding room are separated.  The pressure plate is set to activate when the weight of a single puppy is on it, so when a puppy eventually wanders onto the plate, it is trapped there. 

Then, when the timing puppy has been exhausted by the magma/water/falling etc. and sends the tick signal, it also sends a signal to a door adjacent to the trapped puppy.  A meeting area designated over the timing puppy pressure plate tile would even coax the new puppy to walk there himself.

[SuicideJunkie]

Puppies will be consumed at a fixed rate.
The dogs will breed at a rate proportional to the number of adult females, exponentially increasing.
So therefore you will need a governor for the puppy-generation portion.

Have a large room with *many* small meeting areas defined.  One of them is the entrance to the clock.  One other involves walking along an atom-smasher corridor.  This path should be navigable regardless of the state of the smasher; only the transition should be hazardous.
The smasher should be run by a standard, low frequency repeater.

The smasher will eliminate the population at a rate proportional to the number of dogs, thus keeping the population in check.

In order to avoid clock delays due to puppy loading, the loading mechanism should be attempting to grab a new puppy while the previous one is still in the mechanism.
The completion of one tick should then move the loaded puppy into the mechanism to start the next tick and allow the loader to start searching again.

[Xen0n]

Although, now that I think about it, maybe infighting could kill two puppies with one stone, so to speak.  If we intentionally make the breeding area very very small, then wouldn't the infighting result in puppy deaths until the population grew small enough to live in the room without fighting?  The smaller, weaker puppies should naturally get culled in favour of the breeding adults, though I don't know what the chance of one of the adults getting unlucky and dying is. 

Also, regarding a Puppy-Powered Clock, I thought this might be relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSRUFAj51kU&feature=player_embedded
(Also handy to break any lingering doubts people may have on the ethics of drowning certain puppies in magma.)

[FearfulJesuit]

Dear Armok, what monster have I brought forth?

This is excellent, actually.

[plynxis]

I like both Xen0n's and SuicideJunkie's ideas

i also hate youtube for being a fucking enabler for copyright monkeys - i cant see that damn video cause its blocked in my country

THEIR LOSS

[Kattel]

Really, would any of us feel like we truly succeeded, if we created a Dwarven device which accurately measured time but did NOT consistently and mercilessly slaughter innocent animals?  I fear that each time it tolled out the hour, some part of our souls would mournfully yearn: "A puppy should have died just now, but didn't."

lol sooo siged.

[Xen0n]

I like both Xen0n's and SuicideJunkie's ideas

i also hate youtube for being a fucking enabler for copyright monkeys - i cant see that damn video cause its blocked in my country

THEIR LOSS

You can see if this alternate one works any better.
Although in all honesty it's not worth the effort and is just

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Scrappy Doo yelling "Puppy Power." Perhaps the mascot for our project?

(I do hate how so many Youtube links / Hulu etc. all won't work outside the U.S.  Anytime I'm back home it really cuts down what you do!)

Really, would any of us feel like we truly succeeded, if we created a Dwarven device which accurately measured time but did NOT consistently and mercilessly slaughter innocent animals?  I fear that each time it tolled out the hour, some part of our souls would mournfully yearn: "A puppy should have died just now, but didn't."

lol sooo siged.

This day, I am a child no longer.  Now, I am a man dwarf.

[FearfulJesuit]

So now the question is, how does one measure a month? How many frames is a month?

[plynxis]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Time

[Sphalerite]

I had some more thoughts on the original concept.

The problem with the timing scheme in the OP is that the puppies die on impact before they can trigger the pressure plate.  There are a few ways around this.

The first option is to have the puppy fall through a column of water or magma instead of air.  As far as I know, creatures fall through liquid at the same speed as through air, but are cushioned from falling damage.  The puppy will fall, hit the pressure plate, trigger it, and then drown or be incinerated.

The problem with this is the bug which causes creatures falling into magma to sometimes be immune to heat damage after landing.  The puppy might also be able to swim to the surface instead of drowning.

The other option would be to isolate some hostile and dangerous creature, preferably one with trap-immune, on the pressure plate.  A captive titan or forgotten beast would work.  The puppy will land on it.  Both the puppy and the target creature will be stunned but otherwise unhurt, and the pressure plate will trigger.  Then the target creature will kill the puppy, and the pressure plate will un-trigger.

In either case, the time the puppy takes to die after hitting the pressure plate is unpredictable, so the event you need to use for timing is from when the puppy is dropped to when it hits and triggers the pressure plate.