PCB clock

2 Articles

A light-up clock displays the day of the week.

What Day Is It Again? Check The Clock

January 22, 2025 by 7 Comments

If you’re lucky enough to work from home, you’ll soon find that it presents its own set of challenges, mostly related to work/life balance. It can get so bad that you don’t know what day of the week it is. Really. Ask us how we know.

Rather than miss a meeting (or a day off), prolific hacker [Arnov Sharma] created this day of the week clock. It uses a customized LED driver board with seven sets of three LEDs, each driven by a MOSFET. Each MOSFET is controlled by a DFRobot Mini Beetle ESP32-C3. It runs on a 2200 mAh, 3.7 V lithium-ion battery.

While this is mostly PCBs, there are three printed parts that turn it into a displayable object. We really like the look of this clock — it has just the right amount of pizazz to it and reminds us of a and old movie marquee. Be sure to check out the great build instructions.

We love a good clock around here. In case you missed it, here is the latest from [Moritz v. Sivers] that uses a caustic lens to display the time.

Triple Zone Clock Tells Time In Style

January 6, 2023 by 9 Comments

Although the cutoff for saying ‘Happy New Year’ is somewhere around today, there’s still plenty of time to reminisce about 2022 and all that we accomplished. Hackaday alum [Jeremy Cook] spent much of last year designing and building a triple-zone PCB clock, dubbed the 742 clock. It is called so because of all the 7-segments, and then 42 from the height in millimeters of each PCB. Also because it’s 24 backwards, and if we may be so bold, because 42.

If this looks familiar, it’s because we covered the single-panel version a few months ago. Much like that one, the triple time zone clock is controlled by a single Wemos D1 mini, and the other two panels are chained to the primary board. This version has a frame made of 20/20 extrusion with nice 3D printed caps on the ends to finish off the look.

As with the single-panel clock, this one uses bared-FR4 PCBs to diffuse the LEDs, and the effect looks really nice. We particularly like the capacitive corners that control the clock and the colors, which change throughout the day when left to their own devices. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.

Are you really into LEDs? Consider building a Berlin clock.

Continue reading “Triple Zone Clock Tells Time In Style” →