In the Adafruit Store:

Cross Laser Diode - 5mW 650nm Red

Right Angle USB cable - A/MicroB

High Brightness Pink Electroluminescent (EL) Wire - 2.5 meters

13 Comments

1. 

   This looks awesome! One additional datapoint I’d like to see in the datasheet / feature list is power consumption. Cheers! /pauric

   Comment by pauric — February 26, 2010 @ 8:27 am

2. 

   There’s a lot of details here: http://www.ladyada.net/make/monochron/design.html

   Comment by ladyada — February 26, 2010 @ 10:43 am

3. 

   There are a lot of details there, but I was not able to determine an ‘energy star’ sort of rating for this clock. I, and many people I know, are starting to making conscious purchasing decisions based on the cradle to grave cost of products. Thanks /pauric

   Comment by pauric — February 26, 2010 @ 2:06 pm

4. 

   Hmm, not sure what you mean by “energy star” – we dont make refrigerators The clock uses a very efficient display with LED not EL back-lighting. So, altogether its <50mA at 5V so thats a quarter of a Watt. The power supply is high-efficiency switching style (NOT a leaky ‘wall wart’). So total power consumption is 9V * 50mA * lets say 80% efficient = half a Watt. If you dim the display, it may be lower!
   Is that what you’re asking?

   Comment by ladyada — February 26, 2010 @ 2:33 pm

5. 

   That’s really cool. A while back John Maushammer showed me his home made wrist watch that keeps time in a similar manner. His latest version plays Space Invaders as well.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glud1WLrQsQ&NR=1

   Comment by Honus — February 26, 2010 @ 3:18 pm

6. 

   I’d like to see a video of how the transition from 4:59 to 5:00 is managed. Also, whether it can be 12/24 hrs.

   Comment by Mark — February 27, 2010 @ 3:45 am

7. 

   Just read more carefully – it is 12/24 hrs

   Comment by Mark — February 27, 2010 @ 3:46 am

8. 

   The energy star rating system is a scheme that some governments run to rate appliances based on energy consumption – ie in the case of a washing machine, electricity to run the machine + energy to heat the water is taken into account. It’s a system where products are ranked against their peers, or some standard which they should achieve – the better an appliance does than the mean, the higher its rating.

   At a generous estimate of 0.5 watt consumption, you can be sure this clock draws less than your microwave, stereo, TV or DVD player in standby. Infact, you could have a few hundred of these clocks plugged in and still use less energy than a single pilot light in a gas furnace.

   Nice clock too!

   Comment by Grub — February 27, 2010 @ 6:03 am

9. 

   Mark, when its time for the hour to change, the ‘other side’ loses. its basically the same but flipped

   Comment by ladyada — February 27, 2010 @ 6:21 pm

10. 

    When I said ‘energy star sort of rating’ I didnt expect it to be taken so literally (o; certainly not expecting comparisons with microwave ovens!!

    Put it like this, if I wanted to be completely granola-crunchy I wouldnt buy any of the OSH clocks here and just hack one of those mechanical quartz clocks that run on a single AA.

    However I’m not a complete hippy, but lets say I wanted to go off the grid, need to carefully manage my power usage and was torn between the ice tube and the pong clock. It might be nice to know how much energy both consume in terms of kwh or even more consumer friendly at a hypothetical 10c / kwh.. what is the estimated cost of running a given OSH for a year. Such information is found on energy star labels… why not take the lead and start something here?

    cheers /pauric

    Comment by pauric — February 27, 2010 @ 6:55 pm

11. 

    hi pauric, the monochron uses half a watt. here’s the math we did – multiply 0.5 W* 365 d/y * 24 h/d / 1000 = 4.5 KWh per year. at 10 cents per KWh, the monochron costs 5 cents to run for the year. The ice tube clock costs perhaps 50 cents. perhaps this why energy star is only for large things, if we make an OSH microwave or dryer we’ll consider this.

    it costs more to post these messages with your giant computers and ours

    if you’d like to lead the charge with OSH energy ratings please do, we’re going to stick to regular ole’ OSH

    Comment by ladyada — February 27, 2010 @ 7:26 pm

12. 

    I did not realise it was so little! obviously a negligible amount of energy, thanks for doing the math

    Comment by pauric — February 28, 2010 @ 8:39 am

13. 

    You’re Welcome!

    Comment by SSquire — March 1, 2010 @ 2:23 pm

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