Binoctular LED clock

A while ago, I saw this blogpost on Hackaday. It shows a seven segment clock made of Neopixels. Actually, this was a brilliant idea, it's surprising that no one thought of it earlier. It's so simple and looks very nice.

Although I liked the idea, I wasn't really thrilled by the design. It was -in my opinion- a (VERY) cool proof-of-concept, great for on a workbench, but not for on my nightstand. So that started me thinking (that's what I like about sharing ideas, inspiring others). As I did not have any single Neopixels lying around (or a LED strip with WS2812B's), I did have a WS2812B-LED ring, with 8 LED's.

Why not make a clock out of those?

This is the result:

This clock runs on a Arduino Nano clone and uses a DS3231 to keep track of time (with backup battery of course). On the back, there are four buttons to set the time and run demo's.

During the project, I made a Python simulation of it:

This is the first implementation, a sort of proof-of-concept. However, I made it presentable enough to put a nightstand (at least, I think so (feel free to disagree)).
I already added some nice to have features, like:
- Ability to change color (or changing colors)
- Show temperature

As can been seen in the photos, the clock consists of laser cut wooden panels. The front is laminated paper that has been cut to size using a vinyl cutter.
When building something yourself, you continuously think 'the next version should have...'. Here are some thoughts:
- Short animation when time changes
- Add USB output port for charging my phone
- A game?
- Light sensor (or setting for dimmed operation, e.g. from 22:00 till 07:00)

I could also replace the Arduino Nano with a NodeMCU ESP8266, a Linkit One, an Oak by Digistump or a Raspberry Pi. All four are lying around here somewhere. This would add wifi to the clock, enabling all kinds of cool extra features:
- Select color using a color picker web page on my phone
- Show messages on screen? (are all letters possible (ehh, readable)?)


Do note that the photos made by phone are actually better readable than it is in reality. :-(

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 2, 2016 at 2:13 PM

    If the cell phone pics make it easier to read because they blur the dots into lines, you could try putting muslin or real nylon diffusion cloth over the LED's. I used muslin when rebuilding my motorcycle dashboard, it helped soften and spread out the back light much better.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RoaldMay 12, 2020 at 4:39 PM

    https://hackaday.com/2016/12/02/7-segment-display-using-neopixel-rings/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A round word clock (sort of)

Image
As I was making a word clock, based on another instructable ( http://www.instructables.com/id/My-Arduino-WordClock/ ), me and my sister were wondering whether a round design would be cool too. While searching the internet, I could not find a round word clock, so we decided to design/create one ourselves. The clock displays the time somewhat similar as on a regular word clock. There are two major differences, on a 'regular' word clock the hours are words. On our word clock they're numbers just like a normal clock. The minutes (in 5 minute steps) are replaced by a word on the clock and the location of the word provides extra information. Note that I use Dutch templates, but an English version should work too. Of course some changes to the software are required. Here's the list of materials used for this clock: 1 - Ikea Pugg clock (costs around $12) 1 - Arduino Uno R3 1 - Real time clock module (based on a DS3231 clock chip) 1 - warm white LEDs on a str...
Read more

A round word clock (part 2)

Image
A couple of years ago, I made a round word clock (see in this blog). It was based on an Arduino  Uno clone with shift registers to control the LEDs. This resulted in a lot of wires on the back of the clock: This left some room for improvements! So now, version 2.0: It is now based on an ESP32 and WS2812B LED's. At startup, it first connects to the internet via wifi to obtain the current time and then displays it on the round word clock. The wiring is much simpler now: But the best new feature is: color!! Each number/text has at least two WS2812b-LEDs behind it and for each single LED there's a constant color loop. This creates a really nice effect, as it will always show multiple colors at once. My kids love it. It does not have any demo modes yet. The plan is to add these demo's in a later stage. First on the list is a webpage to control the clock settings. And this webpage should also show the clock (maybe not in the nice color changes, as the might be to time consuming ...
Read more