A Network Attached VFD Tube Clock

February 10, 2020 fustiniclock, hackaday, vfdLeave a comment

The elegance of Power over Ethernet (PoE) is that you can provide network connectivity and power over a single cable. Unfortunately not nearly enough hardware seems to support this capability, forcing intrepid hackers to take matters into their own hands. The latest in this line of single-cable creations is this beautiful Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) clock from [Glen Akins].

One of the key advantages VFDs have over their Nixie predecessors is greatly reduced energy consumption, and after [Glen] ran the numbers, he saw that a display using six VFD tubes could easily be powered with standard PoE hardware. With this information, he started designing the PCB around the early 1990s era IV-12 tube, which has the advantage of being socketed so he could easily remove them later if necessary.

[Glen] first had to create a schematic and PCB footprint for the IV-12 tube that he could import into Eagle, which he was kind enough to share should anyone else be working with these particular tubes down the line. After a test of the newly designed socket was successful, he moved onto the rest of the electronics.

The clock is powered by a Microchip PIC18F67J60, which connects to the Ethernet network and pulls the current time down from NTP. After seeing so many clocks use an ESP to connect to the Internet over WiFi, there’s something refreshing about seeing a wired version. The tube segments are driven by a HV5812, also Microchip branded. Lastly, [Glen] used a number of DC/DC converters to generate the 1.5 V, 3.3 V, 5 V, and 25 V necessary to drive all the electronics and VFDs.

We absolutely love the simplicity of this clock, from its sleek aluminum enclosure to that single RJ45 jack on the back. But if you’re looking for something with a bit more flash, [Glen] also put together some PoE Christmas lights over the holidays which share a number of design elements with this project.

via A Network Attached VFD Tube Clock — Hackaday

A digital quartz clock from scratch

January 14, 2020January 13, 2020 fustiniclockLeave a comment

Erik van Zijst writes about the design of a 24-hour digital quartz clock with self-dimming LED display:

A digital quartz clock from scratch

After 20+ years of programming, I wanted to get some understanding of the electronics that make my career possible.

I had built the basic individual logic gates with transistors on a breadboard, but to build anything meaningful I needed loads of them and so I bought a somewhat random collection of logic chips on Amazon which introduced me to the 7400-series and the concept of datasheets.

After a few simple projects I wanted to build something more useful: a quartz clock with LED display.

Here is a video of the clock:

The board is shared on OSH Park.

I took a 5 month sabbatical from work and software in general to get into digital electronics, and somehow managed to build my son an actual clock (no uC or code) using @digikey, @kicad_pcb, @oshpark and @Hacksterio.

The pain of patching hardware though!https://t.co/fRYHKCySKn

— Erik van Zijst (@erikvanzijst) January 13, 2020

Digital Handed Clock

March 31, 2017March 23, 2017 fustiniclock, hackadayLeave a comment

We have no idea if the background story is true or not, but we’re not going to let something like “truth” get in the way of a good story. The way [Kwan3217] tells it, first there were hours on sundials. Then when these were divided into sixty minute sections, they were called “minutes”. “Seconds” comes…

via [Kwan]’s Clock Displays Seconds, and Thirds — Hackaday

Raspberry Pi Zero W desk clock

March 13, 2017March 7, 2017 fustiniclock, NTP, raspberry pi, raspberry pi zero, RasPi, rpiLeave a comment

Nick Sayer created a LED desk clock driven by NTP on a Raspberry Pi Zero W:

Raspberry Pi Zero W desk clock

When I was in college, I bought and built a Heathkit GC-1000 WWV clock. Since then, I’ve been somewhat interested in accurate time measurement. I recently designed a GPS driven clock, but sometimes your local WiFi reception is better than GPS (say, indoors). For those circumstances, a clock that gets time from NTP over WiFi would be preferable. The newly released Raspberry Pi Zero W makes this quite a bit simpler to achieve

Chronio DIY Watch

February 25, 2017February 16, 2017 fustiniclock, hackaday, hackaday.io, LCD, Low Power, SHARP Memory LCD, watch, wearableLeave a comment

Elliot Williams writes on Hackaday:

Chronio DIY Watch: Slick and Low Power

[Max K] has been testing the battery life of his self-designed watch under real-world conditions. Six months later, the nominally 3 V, 160 mAh CR2025 cell is reading 2.85 V, so the end is near, but that’s quite a feat for a home-engineered smart watch

GPS Clock by Nick Sayer

January 1, 2017December 31, 2016 fustiniclock, gps, hackaday.io, microcontrollerLeave a comment

Nick Sayer created this simple desk clock that gets time from GPS:

GPS Clock

GPS is best known as a ubiquitous, accurate positioning system (obvious from the name), but the way it actually works requires distributing hyper-accurate time information. This makes it possible (and, actually, pretty easy) to make a clock that you never have to set as long as it gets good GPS reception.

Yes, this is way overkill… but GPS is getting so cheap that you might as well.

https://hackaday.io/project/18501-gps-clock

The source code is available on GitHub:

nsayer/GPS_clock

Nick has hacked together a tenth digit for the clock:

Here is a video of the GPS clock in slow motion:

Arduino Pro Trinket Bubble Display

November 7, 2016November 18, 2016 fustiniadafruit, arduino, ATMega, ATmega328, atmel, avr, Bubble Display, clock, EAGLE, hackaday, hackaday.io, LED, trinketLeave a comment

davedarko wrote in his LED displays on Arduinos – a collection project log on hackaday.io:

Arduino Pro Trinket – bubble display

With 4 of HP QDSP-6064 bubble displays in a drawer I felt ready to do something with them and the “Clocks for Social Good” – call on hackaday.com finally got me going

The design files are available on GitHub:

TrinketProShield_display

davedarko has shared the board on OSH Park:

ProTrinket Bubble Display shield

FixieTube Clock

November 6, 2016October 28, 2016 fustiniclock, LEDLeave a comment

davedarko’s mum gave him some small jam jars and it inspired him to design this clock:

FixieTube clock

30ml jam jars hopefully turned into beautiful LED displays – nixietube like looking without the higher voltage fuzz – fake LED nixietubes

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

davedarko/FixieTubes

Here’s a video of the clock in action:

3 Inch Tall 7-segment Clock

November 1, 2016October 27, 2016 fustiniclock, EAGLE, LCDLeave a comment

Kevin Rye decided to build a 15 inch long digital clock after acquiring these 3 inch 7-segment displays. He documented the project from start to finish:

I picked up these sweet LUMEX S101D22TR 7-Segment LCDs the other day.

The PCBs for the hours, minutes, and seconds display modules are identical. They’ll just be wired differently.

On the driver boards, data flows in from the left out to the next section on the right.

The source files can be downloaded from:

15inch-LCD-Clock-Source.zip

Zorg Door Bomb replica

October 7, 2016October 5, 2016 fustiniclock, movie, prop, zorgLeave a comment

Kevin Rye recreated this replica from a favorite movie:

It’s the Zorg Door Bomb!

The Fifth Element is one of my all-time favorite movies. I watched it again the other day and as soon as I saw Zorg’s Door bomb, I said to myself, “I’m so building that!”

Here it is in action: