Binary Clock


[Walter] sent in his version of a PIC binary clock. It’s a nice alternative If you don’t want one that runs off TTL logic, This one runs on a PIC 16F628 (Microchip is great for samples) and displays hours in 5 bits and minutes in 6. His blog also features a decent looking programmer, and he shows off his version of the Suunto dive computer interface that’s been around for quite a while.

18 thoughts on “Binary Clock

  1. 010100110110111101101101011001010110111101101110011001010010000001100111011011110111010000100000011101010111000000100000011011110110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000111011101110010011011110110111001100111001000000111001101101001011001000110010100100000011011110110011000100000011101000110100001100101001000000110001001100101011001000010000001110100011010000110100101110011001000000110110101101111011100100110111001101001011011100110011100101110

  2. @nickjohnson: agreed about the 628 in terms of cost; however, as our ever helpful mr. o’brien mentioned, you can get them in samples from parts suppliers. samples, i.e. free, including shipping, often in quantities >= 10! what’s better than free? …if you’ve not tried this, i highly, highly suggest this route for any hobbyist.

  3. no offense to the project, but binary clocks are kind of old hat. it wouldn’t be any more technically adavnced, but i’d be more impressed with a less common numbering system like octal or some convoluted system like base 3 or 5…

  4. I put the schematic online too.

    It costs (including 16f628 or 627 is also good) about 7 dollars in parts including 628.

    It is different from the commercial binary clocks (and thus original):
    16h23
    will be shown as
    10000 010111

    Whereas on the commercial binclocks it is shown as
    00001 01010 00010 00011

    The commercial ones only teach you binary numbers from 0 to 9.
    This one teaches you binary numbers from 0 to 59

  5. I might actually do this one, or a modification of it. I’ve always wanted a binary clock that reads the time in true binary, (ie first bit representing am/pm, second bit representing after or before 6, third bit after/ or before 3, and so on… 8 LEDs would get you down to around 5 minutes accuracy, plenty enough for my purposes.

    Has anyone else ever though of time as a binary concept rather than the arbitrary 24x60x60?

    A single byte could represent that ~5 minute accurate time unit. We could call it a binute. :)

  6. I don’t mind if they show a different binary clock a day. It’s still ingenuity. If you don’t like it, why not build something better? I bet most of the people criticizing can’t even follow directions to make one if they had someone hold their hand the entire process.

  7. 01101000011101010111001101101000001000000110000101100010011011110111010101110100001000000111010001101000011001010010000001110011011000010110110101110000011011000110010101110011

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