[Vegard Paulsen] dug deep down to the romantic geek at his core and built this box that counts the days he’s spent together with his Valentine. As you can see, it uses a four-digit seven segment display installed in the lid of a wooden box. An Arduino mini is responsible for driving the display, but as you might already know, to keep accurate time you’re going to need a reliable clock source. Instead of using a temperature compensated crystal oscillator like the ChronoDot he decided to pull time data from the Internet via a pair of RF modules.
His closing comments mention that this display will only work for around 27 years but he figures he can always build a bigger display. We’d keep this around, physically unaltered for sentimental value, but switch to a hexadecimal readout to track just over 179 years. Maybe that’s a bit too geeky.
27 years countdown to midlife crisis and picking up a hot new 22 year old!
27 year countdown to midlife crisis and trading in the current model for a hot young 22 year old!
It should go to 9999 then switch over to years in the first 2 digits then days in the last two?
no, he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of 25 more years with her.
Hmm i think the battery will run out long before that,among other things….
Oh no battery,still 27 years is way too long…
But a well thought present none the less.
Just draw a ‘1’ left of the screen when it rolls over.
Isn’t that what the EEPROM killer guy did?
If I built one for my wife, I’d add a pause button. History doomed to repeat itself and all that. Nothing says “I love you” like giving it another shot, am I right?
there is another wooden box that make a great addition to the day MFLB ;)
I can’t BELIEVE you forgot our 0x100 anniversary!
you should make it count down just to fuck with them XD
This looks cool but it would look better with a mechanical display. Maybe from an odometer?
I’d have made it a five digit display, using the first 2 as year, and the last 3 as day. That way it would max out at ~100 year, which would be more than enough I think.
In a few years he can build a box to tote up his alimony, but he’ll have to add more numbers.
@Gdogg do you mean 0b100 ?
0x100 is 256:)
I like it..
i think it’s cuter with just days rather then “years and days”..
Why is the latch upside down?
@Jack: Because right side up was too mainstream.
Arduino and RF modules for a day counter? This guy wins the overkill award….
The RF module is what I’d use too – it’s foolproof one it picks up the Frankfurt long wave signal, no matter how many days the battery may have been out – and this is the kind of application where you do NOT want mistakes.
But I would have made it a bit more private – display embedded INTO the box, so you see it when you lift the lid (sensed with a magnet embedded in the lid, hall sensor in the box itself). The battery would last way longer, and you could have that extra bit of “fridge magic” never quite knowing what the display does with the lid closed.
@Max,
I too vote for the elusive “fridge magic!”