There’s a good chance you’ve seen “Nixie clocks” on the Internet that replace the classic cold cathode tubes with similarly sized LCD panels. The hook is that the LCDs can show pictures and animations of Nixie tubes — or pretty much anything else for that matter — to recreate the look of the real thing, while being far cheaper and easier to produce. It’s a hack for sure, and that’s the way we like it.
[Trung Tran] liked the idea, but didn’t just want to buy a turn-key clock. So he’s decided to build his own version based on the ESP32-S3. The WiFi-enabled microcontroller syncs up to the latest time via NTP, then uses a PCF8563 real-time clock (RTC) module to keep from drifting too far off the mark. The six displays, which plug into the custom PCB backplane, can then show the appropriate digits for the time. Since they’re showing image files, you can use any sort of font or style you wish. Or you could show something else entirely — the demo video below shows off each panel running the Matrix “digital rain” effect.
Unfortunately, [Trung Tran] hasn’t shared a whole lot of technical info about this project yet. But between the Open Source Hardware logo on the PCB, and the fact that project page says “Part 1” at the top, we’re hopeful that more information is forthcoming.
We first saw the commercial version of this concept back in 2021, and had to admit, it was a pretty cool idea. It’s good to see the community creating their own versions, and if they end up being open hardware so that others can reproduce and improve the design, even better.
I think any project on Hackaday.io should include source code, BOM, and schematic.
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I concur, FOSS/FOSH, or FOFF!
I’m going to disagree. I often appreciate seeing what others have built without them literally giving me the instruction manual. One can imagine how it “could” be built without being spoon fed, and then create their own implementation of a similar concept.
If you use something like https://github.com/gmag11/ESPNtpClient there is no need for an extra hardware RTC unless you expect offline times of multiple days and still want to maintain subsecond accuracy.
“The WiFi-enabled microcontroller syncs up to the latest time via NTP, then uses a PCF8563 real-time clock (RTC) module to keep from drifting too far off the mark.”
I have a homebrew ESP32 SNTP disciplined clock with a cute little OLED display. Initially I used a DS3231S (not M) hardware RTC to keep accurate time in-between SNTP updates. But with time and bit of experimentation I discovered that as long as I kept the Espressif ESP32 DevKit-C module indoors where the temperature was fairly consistent in order to keep the displayed time accurate enough for human consumption (significantly less than a second of error per day), I only had to update the ESP32’s internal RTC twice a day (approximately every twelve hours) by synching with SNTP. So I removed the DS3231S hardware RTC all-together.
For those of us with the EleksTube IPS clock there’s a number of replacement firmwares (google it), the best in my opinion is this one: https://www.nixies.us/projects/elekstubeips-clock/
I see that at least one of those says it might work on the fake versions. I got one from PCBWay. I’ll have to check those projects out. Thanks for sharing!
I built a neat clock with the esp8266. It has no display at all. It connected to the wifi and used ntp to get the time, and I had samples of the westminster chimes I cut apart so it had the quarter, half, three quarter, and full hour chimes, as well as chiming out the hour. I hooked it to a pair of old computer speakers and it sounded really good. It was also neat that it was easy to set it up not to chime at times like at night or on weekend mornings.
It’s funny the photo shows an Open Source Hardware logo on the board but there’s no schematics, BOM or source code.
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I have something similar from a crowdfunding campaign several years back – they shipped but the devices are abandonware. Company was Rotrics. Shame.
Definitely will not trust this unless the schematics, BOM etc are shared, hope OSHWA take issue with the logo if it is not!