[WhiskeyTangoHotel] wanted to build an LED clock after seeing some great designs online. They elected to go after a ring clock design, based around the ever-popular WS2812B addressable LEDs.
The core of the build is the HELTEC WiFi 32 development board. It’s not one we’re intimately familiar with, but it’s based around the popular Expressif ESP32. Since it’s got WiFi, it’s able to simply dial up a network time server to always keep accurate time. It then drives a set of WS2812B LEDs set up in six rings. They display the current time with a layout akin to that of a typical analog clock.
What makes this build just a little more fun is the inclusion of Disco Mode. At the press of a button, the full set of LEDs flashes out some fun dancing patterns. The clock is also programmed to trigger the same display for sixty seconds at the top of each hour.
It’s a straightforward build—what might have been highly complicated to build two decades ago has been simplified with the magic of addressable LEDs. What’s also cool is that this clock was apparently inspired by another project shared on these very pages. If you’ve been spurred to build something cool yourself, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!
AFAICS, there is no reference to the supplier of the “Ring’o’LEDs” – or have I missed that?
I should have made my previous post – look for it below – a reply to this one.
A little more detail: I haven’t dug deep enough to know the specific product(s) [WhiskeyTangoHotel] used, but they appear to be pre-made circular addressable light strings in different sizes, all connected into a single long a single chain. There are five concentric circles (plus a center pixel) from the outside to the inside, and his code knows which numbered pixels are on which rings/center.
The circular LED strings he used are built onto printed-circuit-type boards so there’s no variability in how they’re positioned. You could vary the design somewhat using a more flexible string of addressable LEDs, but still use the same code with no modifications unless you changed the number or type (RGB vs RGBW pixels).
So, what is the time shown in the Title Photo?
All I see is the outline of a duck’s head.
What’s wrong with you? It’s clearly Umbrella o’clock.
I’m going all Sgt. Schultz here and saying I see nothing.
I do have some color blindness, so maybe that’s it.
Maybe the article picture is of the mentioned “disco mode”?
The LEDs are a string of addressable pixels. Adafruit calls them “NeoPixels”. They sell them in various formats, all supported by their easy-to-use NeoPixel library for Arduino and ESP32 platforms.
Similarly-addressable LED strings can also be scavanged from various sources, including inexpensive color light strings I’ve found at Walmart. You want the ones that can do various colors simultaneously, not the strings that are all one color at any given time. You can also sometimes look at the innards of the light string. Those with R/G/B or R/B/G/W connections aren’t addressable, but ones with “+/-/Data” are addressable and might be usable with NeoPixel and other similar libraries.
Article says, “based around the ever-popular WS2812B addressable LEDs”.
At least it does now.
See: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/27/circle-full-of-leds-becomes-a-clock/
https://github.com/MilovdZee/LEDCircleClock