There are so many elements that make a good clock worth looking at for much longer than necessary. Not only is this clock quite cool to behold, it plays Pac-Man around the time! Yes, of course you can interact with the Pac-Man — touching the edges of the screen will make him go left, right, up, or down accordingly. You can also change to Ms. Pac-Man and make all the animations go normal speed, fast, or crazy-fast.
[TechKiwiGadgets] built a Pac-Man clock a few years ago that was well-received, but not cheap or easy to mimic. Since then, they have ported the code to the ESP32 and made a new version that has fewer and friendlier components. Not only that, they have great instructions for building the ESP32 shield on protoboard and also offer the shield as an open-source fab-able PCB. Still too much work? The complete kit version is available over on Tindie. Be sure to check it out in crazy speed mode action after the break.
Although this isn’t the first Pac-Man clock we’ve seen, it devotes equal attention to the time and the game, whereas this one is more about the game itself.
Continue reading “ESP32 Pac-Man Clock Keeps Track Of How Long You Watch It”

The bragging rights of owning a vintage arcade machine are awesome, but the practicality of it – restoring what is likely a very abused machine, and the sheer physical space one requires – doesn’t appeal to a lot of people. [Jason] has a much better solution to anyone who wants a vintage arcade machine, but doesn’t want the buyer’s remorse that comes with the phrase, “now where do we put it?”