Realize The Truth… There Is No Word Clock

Do you always look at it encoded? – Well you have to. The image translators work for the construct program.

Word clocks are supposed to de-encode time into a more readable format. Luckily [Xose Pérez] managed to recover the encoded time signal of the simulation we are all living in with his word clock that displays time using a stylish Matrix code animation.

[Xose] already built his own versions of [Philippe Chrétien’s] Fibonacci Clock and [Jeremy Williams’s] Game Frame, and while doing so he designed a nice little PCB. It’s powered by an ATmega328p, features an RTC with backup battery, an SD-card socket, and it’s ready to drive a bunch of WS2812Bs aka NeoPixels. Since he still had a few spare copies of his design in stock, his new word clock is also driven by this board.

The clock itself is basically a sandwich with a laser-cut smoked acrylic panel for the front and a transparent sheet of acrylic as back support. In between goes a laser-cut cardboard letter mask, a piece of white paper as a diffuser, a 3D printed black matrix, as well as a flexible 16×16 WS2812B panel.

Besides the Matrix effect, [Xose] also implemented a few other display modes and multi-language support in his firmware. All CAD data and the firmware for the clock are available in a Bitbucket repository, and there’s also one for the board’s Gerber files, so you can replicate this build with ease. [Xose’s] clock currently supports Spanish and Catalan, but both the firmware and OpenScad file for the mask can easily be modified to add other languages. Enjoy the video below, where [Xose] offers you two pills demonstrates his build:

11 thoughts on “Realize The Truth… There Is No Word Clock

  1. I like it. Would be nice if the falling characters are not stopping, and the current time is shown with a different color with a slight delay to make readable, still, like POV.

  2. the reason you can not see the clock is because you are trying to view light that is not there.

    try getting into the clock and ask the clock what time it is.
    if you are nice it may oblige and the clock will deliver what you seek most.

    …pixels in the chain.

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