Sunrise Alarm Clock Uses DCF77 For Perfect Time

December 6, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s a sunrise alarm clock that keeps perfect time. It was designed and built by [Renaud Schleck] who also published a post detailing the process.

As you can see, a series of white LEDs inside of the transparent case which provide the simulated sunrise. As the days get short and the nights longer we do see the benefit of having your clock brighten the room before it jolts you out of your slumber. Speaking of, that alarm sound seems to be the weak link in his design. He’s using a square wave smoothed with capacitors to drive a speaker at either end of the case. We didn’t hear an example but we imagine this not the most gentle of sounds.

The rest of the design is quite well done. He’s using a 4×20 Character LCD display and adjusts the backlight using PWM. A DCF77 radio feeds data from an atomic clock signal to the MSP430 chip which runs the clock. There’s even a battery backup in case the power goes out.

We just saw a project yesterday that aims to improve signal quality with a DCF77 radio.

[via Reddit]

The Beginnings Of A Geeky Wristwatch

December 5, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Wow, we’re seeing all kinds of good stuff from NYC Resistor today. [Caleb] found this link to [Hudson’s] early work on a geeky wristwatch. It is based around an HDSP-2112 eight-digit alpha-numeric display. Each digit is a 5×7 array of LEDs, but the look of it really reminds us of [Woz’s] Nixie Wristwatch. The nice thing about using a display like this one is it’s much easier to drive and the power requirements don’t really call for special consideration either.

The display happens to be nearly the same footprint as the Teensy 2.0. In fact, the display is a bit longer. That makes it a perfect backpack, bringing everything necessary to drive the display. Check out the video after the break to see it scrolling the time as words, and displaying numbers.

This needs to have an RTC and portable power source before you can wear it around. But the proof is there. Perhaps [Hudson] will spin his own board with a uC that includes RTC capability and a charging circuit for a tiny Lithium cell.

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Minecraft Clock Radio Puts A Creeper Head Next To Your Bed

November 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

This clock radio plays tunes from Minecraft and it’s decorated to look just like a creeper head. In the game mob heads are available as decoration and [Young_Maker] liked to spice up his virtual bedside table with a creeper head. But we think it looks just as good in its physical form.

The main part of the clock is an Arduino with a character LCD screen. A DS1307 real-time clock makes sure the device is accurate. We called this a clock radio in the title of the post, but it’s more of a clock MP3 player. The uMp3 board is used to play random music from the game. We would categorize the soundtrack as minimalism, which is a reasonable way to gently wake in the morning. But if time runs out the boom of an exploding creeper is played to make sure you’re not late for work.

We’ve embedded [Young_Maker’s] demo video after the jump.

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LED Pocket Watch

November 30, 2012 by Eric Evenchick 22 Comments

[Frank] wanted a classy way of telling the time, so he built up a LED Pocket Watch. The watch features 132 LEDs for displaying the time, two buttons to activate and change modes, a vibration motor, and a buzzer.

It’s controlled by a picoPower ATmega645P, which has enough pins to drive the array of LEDs, an internal real time clock, and low power consumption. The device is housed behind laser cut acrylic face, and sits in a 3D printed case.

To power the device, [Frank] used a rechargeable lithium coin cell battery. The charging circuitry is based on a MCP73831, which is an easy to integrate charge control IC. A USB connector is used to provide power to the board.

One of the bigger challenges of the design is driving the large array of LEDs. [Frank] uses Charlieplexing to group the LEDs and reduce the number of pins required. Another trick he used was offsetting the ISP header pins. This allows for programming the AVR without soldering a connector to the board.

[Frank]’s Instructables write-up is very detailed, and includes explanations of the schematic, PCB layout, software design, and case design. It’s a good read that details his design decisions.

After the break, watch [Frank]’s video overview of the project.

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Spare Parts Pulled Together Into A Nixie Clock

November 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

We’d like to dig around in [Small Scale Research’s] parts bin. Apparently there’s good stuff in there because he managed to build this Nixie tube clock using mostly leftovers.

The chip driving the device is an ATtiny1634. We weren’t familiar with it so here’s a datasheet (pdf) if you’re curios as well. The microcontroller communicates with an old GPS module in order to keep perfect time. There is an external antenna for it which connects through the hole next to the red switch seen above. The high voltage driver is a repurposed backlight inverter which is fed 12V power from an old laptop supply.

The album linked above shows the build quite well and even includes full schematics. There are some fireworks when he encountered an issue with a pretty large cap shorting to a resistor leg. If this isn’t enough juicy detail for you there are a few more nuggets shared in the Reddit comments.

More CRT Fun With The Scope Clock

November 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

That’s a sexy way to use parts from an old oscilloscope. [Aaron] took his inspiration from another project that was using CRTs from old oscilloscopes. Now he’s giving back with a site dedicated to sharing information about the Scope Clock. This project is along the same lines as the one we saw a few days ago.

The image above shows his first build in its new home in Hong Kong. The clock is housed in two clear acrylic containers, paired through a surprisingly beefy military grade connector. You can see the journey that it took to get to this polished finish by going to the Prototype tab at the top of the page linked above. One of the images shows some fast captures of the screen redraw. It lets you see the vectors which are being traced on the phosphor screen by the electron gun. This gives an image that we think is far more pleasing than the row scanning of a traditional CRT monitor.

Of course you don’t have a to start from scratch either. Here’s a clock project that just augments a functional CRT scope.

Nixie Clock That Doesn’t Skimp On The Number Of Tubes

November 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Nina Blum] figures that if you’re going to the trouble of driving Nixie tubes you might as well use a lot of them. The details about this clock, which were sent directly to our tips line, lists a total of thirteen tubes used. There are six Russian IN-8 tubes (large digits), four Z573M tubes (small digits), but the colon tubes and the sine wave tube part numbers were not specified.

An ATmega8 controls the segments via a set of transistors. To operate the display [Nina] included a user interface made from five buttons and a four line character LCD. There is a video showing off the menu system that includes a way to set the time, date, and toggle the various illuminated bits. We’re waiting for permission to post that clip on our YouTube channel as [Nina] only included a Rapidshare link to the movie. Right now you’ll find more images after the break and we’ll embed the video if we get to okay.

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