Learn from the Ice Tube Clock
posted Aug 25th 2009 12:45pm by Mike Szczysfiled under: home hacks
Looks like they’re at it again over at Adafruit. This time they’ve produced a clock that looks more like it should be attached to a munition rather than cruising bedside. But, geek-cred aside, there’s a lot to be learned from their design. Like we’ve grown to expect, they’ve put together some good documentation on their choice of components.
Start off by taking a peek at their 5v power regulator. There is an extra diode on the output side that prevents reverse current from the 3v backup battery. The AVR ATmega168 that controls the clock is used to detect loss of power and quickly shift to the battery backup. They’ve also used the microcontroller as a boost converter for the high voltage VFD, a nice trick we’ve seen before.
[Thanks pt]
Commercial products from an online vendor don’t qualify as hacks in my book. This kind of half-disguised ads for ladyada, sparkfun & al seem to appear more and more often lately.