ClOCkTAL: For When Reading A Clock Is Just Too Easy

September 13, 2021 by Dave Rowntree 17 Comments

Over on Hackaday.io, [danjovic] presents clOCkTAL, a simple LED clock for those of us who struggle with the very concept of making it easy to read the time. Move aside binary clocks, you’re easy, let’s talk binary coded octal. Yes, it is a thing. We’ll leave it to [danjovic] to describe how to read the time from it:

Do not try to do the math using 6 bits. The trick to read this clock is to read every 3-bit digit in binary and multiply the MSBs by 8 before summing to the LSBs.

Simple. If you’re awake enough, that is. Anyway, we’re a big fan of the stripped-down raw build method using perf board, and scrap wood. No details hidden here. The circuit is straightforward, being based on a minimal configuration needed to drive the PIC16F688 and a handful of LEDs arranged in a 3×4 matrix.

An interesting detail is the use of Bresenham’s Algorithm to derive the one event-per-second needed to keep track of time. And no, this isn’t the more famous Bresenham’s line algorithm you may be more familiar with, it’s much simpler, but does work on the same principle of replacing expensive arithmetic division operations with incremental errors. The original Bresenham’s Algorithm was devised for using with X-Y plotters, which had limited resolution, and was intended to allow movements that were in an imperfect ratio to that resolution. It was developed into a method for approximating lines, then extended to cover circles, ellipses and other types of drawables.

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4-LED Octal Clock Demands Colorful Math

May 5, 2017 by John Baichtal 12 Comments

We’ve all seen LED clocks where RGB LEDs are used to display time. It seems like the simpler the interface, the more likely you’d need to do math to figure out the time. This Octal Clock by [Alex Kurrasch] proves the point by using only four LEDs: the top two show hours and minutes, and the bottom two LEDs are multipliers.

Using octal numbering, [Alex] translates the data using a Venn diagram of color mixing. The mapping uses 1 as red, 2 as green, followed by yellow, blue, magenta, and cyan. It ends with 7 as white (all on) and 0 as black (all off).

As the time changes, a fading algorithm changes the display to match. He offers the time of 7:38pm as an example in the grid shown here. Base-8 math is provided; don’t worry, you’ll get really good at this if you make your own wristwatch version… people will learn to never ask you about the time.

The clock uses a ATMega64 running assembly language firmware with a DS1306E+ RTC chip keeping track of time. The enclosure is cool too; [Alex] milled the case out of mahogany and the front and back plates are anodized aluminum. The unique looking diffusers on the LEDs are actually paraffin, a trick that [Elliot Williams] mentioned in his recent article on diffuser materials.