clock

656 Articles

Over-engineered Clock Finds Purpose As RSS Reader

February 21, 2011 by 14 Comments

[Bob Alexander] admits that he over-engineered his clock, giving it eight control buttons, eight twelve-segment alpha-numeric display digits, a GPS module as a time source, and a beefy microcontroller to boot. But he’s found a way to get more for his money out of the device by adding RSS and weather features to it.

Since he’s using the PIC 18F4550 it’s a snap to add USB connectivity. From there he wrote a fantastic PC-side application for communicating with the display. Now he has the option of displaying time, RSS feeds, or weather by scrolling through the options with one of the buttons. Perhaps the best feature is the option to launch a browser on the PC and view the current story just by pressing a button on the display. Check out the two demos after the break; one shows the clock features and the other demonstrates the C# software.

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Pong Clocks Using LED Matrix Modules

February 9, 2011 by 9 Comments

We love Pong clocks because they’re showpieces. This particular offering, called the Wise Clock, is the third hardware revision of the project. The LED display is dead simple since they’re using a 32×16 bi-color module from Sure Electronics. If you don’t want to design and build your own multiplexing display this is a somewhat inexpensive and high-performance alternative.

After the break you can see that the paddle movements look very realistic. They move like a human player might, which is quite often not the case with these clocks. If you want to see how that’s done, check out the code which was originally developed by [123led] for a different project.

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How To Build A Ping-pong Ball Display

January 31, 2011 by 41 Comments

If you’ve been lusting after your own glowing display we’re here to help by sharing some simple building techniques that will result in an interesting project like the one you see above. This is a super-accurate clock That uses ping-pong balls as diffusers for LEDs, but with a little know-how you can turn this into a full marquee display. Join me after break where I’ll share the details of the project and give you everything you need to know to build your own.

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The Lunchtime Clock Gives You 12 Extra Minutes

January 18, 2011 by 41 Comments

The Lunchtime clock is a hacked clock that pulls a sneaky little trick to get you a longer lunch. In this instructible, [Randofo] shows us how he uses an Atmega168 and a realtime clock kit from Adafruit to slow the clock down 20% starting at 11:00 and then speed it back up at 11:45, gaining you an extra 12 minutes of sweet delicious lunch. Not really sure how noticeable this would be? Check out the video after the break. This is pretty hilarious and we can actually think of a few offices where this might work. However, many offices rely on their main network server for actual time keeping leaving this as just an amusing novelty. Still, those with luddite bosses can rejoice in your new-found extended lunch.

[via Gizmodo]

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Alarm And Wake Up Light

December 22, 2010 by 18 Comments

On the shortest day of the year wouldn’t it be nice to wake up to a bright room? This alarm clock with an integrated wake-up light is one way to do just that. It has some nice features, like a wood veneer that allows the seven-segment display to shine through, but hides it when the display is turned off. There’s also a feature to adjust the color based on ambient room temperature (another way to dwell on how cold it is in your bedroom).

A CC1101 RF chip came to the party, but we can’t figure out what it’s purpose is in this circuit. If you can shed some light on its involvement please do so in the comments.

[Thanks Eric]

Hackaday Links: November 28, 2010

November 28, 2010 by 6 Comments

The Clock Clock

This digital display is made from several analog clocks with thick hands. Together they make something of a 7-segment display, which can be used to display the time. It reminds us of the “Shared Time” installation we covered previously. [Thanks Drum365 via Anonimiss Files]

Quickly desolder lots of parts

[Rhys Goodwin] is grabbing parts from junk PCBs but he’s not using a rework station. Instead it’s a hot-air gun and a brisk tap on the bench to send the parts flying. Well, at least he’s not using a blow-torch like [Ben Heck] does.

Binary Hero

This bank of 8 toggle switches is the controller for Binary Hero, a geeky take on Guitar Hero. When you see a decimal number come down the screen set your toggle to the binary equivalent in time or the game will be over before you know it. [Thanks Fabien]

Quick fan POV

[GMG] took a small persistence of vision board and slapped onto an oscillating fan blade. Along with a couple of magnets on the safety cage this display is a persistence of vision hack you can pull off in an hour or two.

Speed up laser etching

[James] figured out a way to cut down on the time it takes to etch multiple copies of one item with a laser cutter. It doesn’t run the laser faster, but orients the pieces in a way that means less movement of the head while the laser is not on. Read through his article and see if this method can help you out when doing some CNC work.

Nixie Frequency Counter Gone Timepiece

November 12, 2010 by 25 Comments

nixie clock hack

[Windell] of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories took an ancient Nixie tube based frequency counter and converted it into a clock. The unit he got his hands on is an HP model that was still in great shape. He’s using an internally generated one second pulse as the clock signal, but some modifications are necessary to display time. That’s because the frequency counter is base 10 and clocks use a quirky combination of base 60 and base 12.

It wasn’t too much of a problem to rig up a system to track minutes and seconds. The tens digit for each is monitored by a couple of AND gates that he added to the mix. When they detect a ‘6’ the digit is reset and a pulse increments the next digit as the carry. This is more difficult to accomplish with the hours though. Minutes and seconds count from 0 to 59 but hours don’t start at 0. Instead of over-complicating the logic [Windell] used a bit of slight-of-hand. The Nixie tubes for the hours have been rewired so that when the counter is at 0, the filament in the shape of a 1 lights up. No difference in logic, just a translation that makes them display one digit higher than the actual count.