What Has 114 LEDs And Is Always Running?

September 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

The answer, of course, is a word clock. This is actually [Eric’s] second version of a word clock. Like the first one, it uses 114 LEDs to back light the words on the display.

In his first iteration he used an Arduino to drive a Charlieplex array of lights. It was an 11 by 10 grid, plus four LEDs to display the in-between minutes as dots at each corner of the clock face. This time around he’s still using an Arduino, but the lights have seen a huge upgrade. In one of his build pictures you can see the reel of RGB led modules which have two RGB LEDs and an HL1606 driver on each segment. These are SPI controlled, making them easy to hook up, using just a few data and power bus rails. Check out the test video after the break that shows what this grid is capable of.

In case you can’t figure out what time is displayed above, you might check out an English version of a Word Clock face to help in your own build.

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Putting Twitter In A VFD Clock

September 29, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

Not content with only knowing the time, [trandi] decided his Vacuum Fluorescent Display clock would be much better if it displayed the weather and a Twitter feed.

[trandi] received a Lady Ada Ice Tube clock last month. The kit went together almost too easily. Now he had to, “make it connect to other ‘stuff’ and display some custom messages.” After playing with the firmware to display a Hello World, [trandi] mucked around with the GPS mod and figured out how to add scrolling text over a serial connection.

A serial connection to an Internet-connected computer is all well and good, but [trandi] really wanted a stand-alone solution. A tiny WiFi to RS-232 board was sourced and the work of getting a clock on the internet began in earnest. After a weekend was wasted trying to debug the HTTP mode of the WiFi board, [trandi] gave up and used TCP mode with manually constructed HTTP headers.

The clock gets the current weather and a Twitter feed. To one-up to the Ice Cube GPS mod, the clock now sets its own time from the Internet. Check out the video of [trandi] showing off his Internet clock and fine collection of single malts after the break.

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MSP430-based Wristwatch Project

September 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Nav] is working on a scratch-built wristwatch. Although it is based on an MSP430 microcontroller, it’s not the ready-to-hack ezCronos that you might be thinking of. Instead, [Nav] started with a different TI development tool that we’ve looked at before, the ez430-F2013.

The breakout board for the F2013 is small enough to meet his needs, but still provides easy soldering with 0.1″ vias that break out each pin. To make sure the timepiece is accurate he added a 32.768 kHz clock crystal. A small, square, LCD screen acts as the face of the watch, but we didn’t find specific part information for the display.

Currently the watch can run for a few days on the CR2032. We’d bet some work with sleep modes for the microcontroller can help with that. The watch has a couple of buttons that let you control it, and [Nav] discovered that he could fit everything into the watch case for an iPod nano. That’s creative!

We’ve seen other hacks with tiny batteries. The next logical step here would be to swap out the disposable coin cell for something that can be topped off with an external charger.

Amazing RGB POV Clock

September 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 21 Comments

We’re no strangers to POV time pieces around here, but something about them never gets old. Whether they use a ring of LEDs to draw clock hands, or an intricately cut HDD platter to replicate LCD segments, we love seeing them. [David] sent in this hard drive POV clock built by a fellow named [Kly], and it’s just beautiful.

[Kly’s] “Propeller” POV clock is named as such due to the design of the circuit board. The board is mounted on the HDD spindle, rotating much like an airplane’s propeller. The construction details are sparse, but from what we can find, it is based around a PIC32MX microcontroller, which is used to control the 66 SMD RGB LEDs mounted on the circuit board.

As you can see in the video below, the tightly packed LEDs result in some pretty amazing visuals.

Aside from watching the video below, be sure to swing by his Youtube channel for a handful of videos showing RGB POV clock in action.

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Arduino Boards Control Cheap Clockworks Via Coil Injection

September 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

Here’s a couple of clocks that use Arduino boards to control inexpensive clockworks. The concept is quite simple, and perhaps best outlined by [Matt Mets’] article on the subject. As it turns out, these clockworks are driven by a coil, forming a device that is quite similar to a stepper motor. If you solder a wire onto each end of the electromagnetic coil and hook those to a microcontroller, you can alter the speed at which the clock ticks. Just drive one pin high and the other low, then reverse the polarity for the next tick.

The clock you see on the right (translated) is a store-bought cheapy. The Arduino barely visible at the bottom of the image is sending pulses once every second. But as you can see in the video after the break, holding down a button will fast-forward through time. [Sodanam] posted his code as well as pictures of the hardware hack itself.

To the left is a horse of a different color. It’s a clock modeled after the Weasley household clock from the Harry Potter books. The clockwork trick is the same, but the Arduino uses GPS data and NOAA weather information to set the status.

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Pinball Machine Eats Your Quarters, Tells Time

September 24, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

[alanamon] had an old pinball machine in his basement, and thought it would be cool to rig it up to serve as a clock as well. He didn’t want it to be just any clock however, he wanted the pinball machine to be the most accurate clock in his house.

Other than telling time using the game’s scoring reels, there were two other things that he wanted to ensure with this build – that the game functioned normally when desired, and that the clock mechanism made no permanent changes to the game. To accomplish this, he dug around inside the machine and made all of his connections using clips secured to the game’s Jones plugs instead of drilling holes and soldering wires.

The clock runs off an Arduino, which gets its its time data using an old GPS receiver he had kicking around. The receiver pulls time data from GPS satellites much like this clock we featured yesterday, updating the score reels once every minute. The clock can be programmed to turn the machine on and off at a scheduled time each day, and simply turning off the Arduino will allow you to play the game in its unaltered state.

We never really contemplated using a pinball machine to tell time, but it works for us! Check out a video of his pinball clock in action after the jump.

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Flip Off Your Alarm Clock!

September 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 33 Comments

[Corbin] hates fumbling around in the dark with his alarm blaring, looking for the off switch. He was so annoyed with regular alarm clocks that he decided to build his own simpler timepiece.

The FlipClock resides in a simple black plastic case lacking any buttons whatsoever. When the alarm goes off, all one needs to do is flip the clock over to disable it. The digits automatically right themselves using an accelerometer to detect when the clock has been turned upside down, and an indicator LED lets you know that the alarm has been turned off.

The clock is based around a Propeller chip, which manages all of the clock’s operations. Instead of using a real time clock IC, [Corbin] is using a GPS module to keep accurate time, something we don’t recall seeing in an alarm clock before. That’s a good thing though, since there are no buttons with which to set the clock. In fact, there are no buttons to set the alarm either – the clock is configured to sound the alarm at the same time each day.

While this clock would certainly be too dangerous for a chronic snooze button abuser like myself, it’s an interesting concept nonetheless!

Check out the video below to see the FlipClock in action.

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