A friend from work gave me a really nice present this Christmas – Bulbdial Clock Kit made by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. This clock is excellent addition to my collection of Ice Tube Clock and Monochron Clock. I have really enjoyed building it. It looks so cool with all its RGB LEDs. There is an optional component that you can add – a real time clock (RTC) with battery back up. It is called Chronodot RTC. All it does is ensure that clock is still ticking when main power source is removed, that way you don’t have to reset the clock every time power cord is unplugged. A nice feature to have on any externally powered clock. You can buy one, but where is fun in that?!
It turned out to be an awesome build and I had lots of fun putting it together. I also chose it because it allows you to program your own clock “faces” for it. I’ve programmed a Space themed face for it that simulates the space station ground track. I’ve also programmed an autodim feature for the backlight because my preferred daylight brightness was too bright at night. The fact that I can customize it to fit my needs is an awesome thing. I wish there were more products like it.
A clock that displays UT(Universal Time) and LST (Local Sidereal Time) is a useful device to have in an astronomical observatory. Using the Arduino open source platform it is possible to build a sidereal clock for less than $200.
NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – From Evil Mad Scientist Labs! Evil Mad Scientist Labs never disappoints with their fantastic kits and clocks. The Alpha Clock Five is no exception: An awesome alarm clock soldering kit– featuring five crazy-bright, crazy huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays in red, a Chronodot RTC (for precise quartz timing, complete with battery backup) and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.
These big 18-segment alphanumeric LED displays are notoriously difficult to drive– there are 54 LED elements inside each LED character and the different segments take different amounts of current. We’ve now made it easy to drive five at a time, and wrapped it all up in neat package with classic alarm-clock styling.
Standard Features of Alpha Clock Five:
Extremely wide display brightness range. All the way from very dim (for dark bedrooms) all the way up to annoyingly bright
Huge 2.3″ (5.8 cm) tall digits are easy to see, even if you normally wear glasses
Alarm on-off indicator
Four standard alarm tones
Snooze function
12-hour (AM/PM) and 24-hour clock modes
Rear-panel white LED nightlight; can be turned on or off from the options menu
Sturdy acrylic case features subtle, laser-engraved button labels
Transparent rear panel lets you show off your handiwork
Comes complete with plug-in power supply and backup battery
Microcontroller comes pre-programmmed; no programming is required
Hacker-friendly Design:
Open source hardware design– easy to hack!
Open source software design– easy to reprogram (if you want to)!
Upgradeable firmware
Based on the ATmega644A microcontroller with 64 kB of flash, with plenty of room to grow.
Comes pre-flashed with Sanguino bootloader; can be programmed through Arduino IDE (with extensions).
6-pin TTL-serial connector, can be used to display data or time sent from computer
Unused I/O pins are broken out from the microcontroller, including one ADC and 5+ GPIO
Open-frame case design gives easy access to serial connector and reset button
Alpha Clock Five kit configurations:
The full (non-basic) Alpha Clock Five kit– available on this page –comes complete with the beautifully made Alpha Clock circuit board, the five alphanumeric LED displays (ultrabright red, 2.3″ character height, with upper and lower decimal points), machine pin sockets for those displays, pre-programmed ATmega644A microcontroller with Sanguino bootloader, 5 tactile button switches, 20 ppm quartz crystal, universal-input plug-in power supply, stainless mounting hardware, alarm buzzer, all of the the LED driver chips, transistors, resistors, capacitors and other little parts needed to build the kit, plus a Chronodot real-time-clock module and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.
The Alpha Clock circuit board is 9.430 X 2.736″ in overall size, and extra stiff at 0.094″ thick. It has a black soldermask and gold plated finish. Once assembled with its case, Alpha Clock Five is approximately 9.44″ wide, 3.78″ tall, and 2.80″ deep.
ChronoDot
Alpha Clock Five comes complete with a Chronodot real-time clock module. It provides your clock kit with (1) a higher accuracy quartz crystal oscillator, (2) a backup battery, and (3) extra geek cred for having a TCXO-based RTC. The included battery is estimated to last for 7 years.
USB-TTL Cable
You may be interested to add an optional FTDI USB-TTL converter cable, which provides an optional interface between your computer and your clock. It can be used (1) to sync the clock’s time to the time on your PC, (2) to reprogram the clock through (a modified version of) the Arduino IDE, or (3) to send serial data to display on the five-character LED display. Note, however, that these are entirely optional operations– no programming is needed to build or use an Alpha Clock Five clock kit!
Power supply
The Alpha Clock Five kit includes a universal-input power supply that will work with worldwide voltages. The plug is a power-strip-friendly US type, so you may need an inexpensive “grocery store” plug adapter to fit the wall socket in your country.
If you need to provide power from an alternate source, Alpha Clock Five requires (and provides hookup locations for) a regulated 5 V dc power supply with 1 A capacity
With Adalight and Adavision out the door, we wanted to cap off the year with at least one more project showcasing the cool things that can be done with our Digital RGB LED Pixels, and we’ll be posting blog updates as the project progresses.
Adalight—ambient lighting for your monitor—was one line of LEDs, formed into a loop. Adavision—a mini LED video wall—spread out into a 2D grid. It’s only natural then to take the next step into the third dimension. Not simply a cube though…with the new year nearly upon us, and paying tribute to Adafruit’s NYC home, why not a shimmery Times Square-style “disco ball?” This would showcase the WS2801 Pixels’ greatest feature: unconstrained by flat planes or fixed grids, they can be spread out into any shape. Anything you can punch 11.5mm holes through, you can festoon with LEDs, whether it’s your backpack or the body panels of a Burning Man art car!
(Ours won’t be anywhere near this big.)
The Times Square ball drop always seemed a bit odd to me. New Year’s Eve? Ball drop? Buh…what? It was an excuse to stay up late, partying and making noise, and I never gave it much thought. Years later I learned the ball drop actually has a fascinating precedent, tracing its roots to one of the most pivotal inventions of modern commerce…
I have a tp-link 1043 router flashed with dd-wrt that runs 24/7. The Ice Tube clock is sitting infront of the router and I figured why not use the router to sync the clock since the router’s time is already ntp sync’d.
NEW PRODUCT – Solder:Time DIY watch kit. Calculator watches are back, but microcontroller watches are always in style. Make your own with this easy to solder real time watch kit from SpikenzieLabs! It comes with a unique laser cut acrylic casing which protects the watch and looks snazzy besides: the four individual acrylic parts cut to fit the internal PCB, battery and switch perfectly. Included is a velcro wrist band. After soldering the Solder:Time, the watch is built by stacking the acrylic parts with the PCB and holding it together with the included screws.
The Solder:Time was designed to be a wrist watch. It doesn’t have to be limited to living on your wrist, you could also use it as a badge or desk clock.
Features:
Great looking laser cut acrylic case
Unique watch
Easy to solder
Stand alone project – no computer or other programmer required. Just solder it and it’s ready!
On board Dallas DS1337+ Real Time Clock (RTC) for super accurate time keeping
Jumper (on bottom) for always on use.
Hackable: Programming and I2C pads labeled on bottom
Clear front and back casing to show the internal electronics
Adjustable wrist band
Can be also be worn as a badge with optional badge clip.
Long lasting battery, with special LED lighting method and very low power processor sleeping.
This is a DIY soldering kit, you’ll need to assemble it yourself but luckily that is very easy, and very fast so this is a good kit for beginners! You’ll need basic soldering tools such as an iron, solder, and diagonal cutters.
Kit includes: Solder:Time PCB with all of the electronics, Laser cut acrylic casing with four screws, Easy to use Velcro type wrist band (long enough for huge wrists, trim-able for smaller ones and a CR2032 Battery. All instructions are here!
One of the more common problems faced by pinball collectors is where to put the next one. The thought came to me one day – what if I could re-purpose the pinball machine? I could then replace an existing appliance with the pin and my problem would be solved. With that in mind I converted my 1975 Bally Wizard into the most accurate clock in the house. And all I needed was an Arduino, A GPS receiver, an 8 relay board and some assorted odd bits.
Dan has taken an Ice Tube Clock, added a Roving Networks WiFly (RN-134) module, and wrote some firmware to add some more features to the clock. He has added time synch, weather data display, and even a Twitter display. He currently has it setup to alternate between the time, the weather and a Twitter message.
and optionally, our good friends the circuit board vice or helper hands. If you don’t have ‘em, pick ‘em up at the Maker Shed if you want to make all your projects easier to handle.
Thermochromic Clock is a 4-digit 7-segment timepiece. Each segment in the display is made with a length of nichrome wire and then covered by a thick layer of black thermochromic paint. Time is displayed by applying voltage to the nichrome wire. As the wire sustains an electric current, it heats up the surrounding thermochromic paint, causing it to become transparent.
I’ve made a few drawing robots (I call them polargraphs because of the polar coordinates system that they use), using Arduinos, Adafruit motorshields and 12v stepper motors, and a Processing sketch. I’m using the v1.4 version of the accelstepper libraries that I was so excited to see you add motorshield compatibility to, when I was making my last project which was the linear clock on instructables so thank you very much for doing that, and of course for making the motorshield so good in the first place.
The machines hang a pen against a surface, in the mode of Hektor the spraycan robot, and I currently have a show on in the Framed Gallery here in Edinburgh. The show includes a installation of a six metre wide drawing machine installed in the gallery, and some smaller ones, and of course, some finished pieces. It opened last Friday 10th with a launch that went really well, and I sold a few pieces! And it’s on until this Friday 17th, and the giant one will be filling in a new section of it’s wall every day this week.
At the end of this week, I’ll be taking some bits of hardware down and presenting the build as part of Hack Circus, which is a part of Interesting 2011 – a little one-day conference in London on Saturday.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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