William Phelps recently wrote to us with alternative firmware for Alpha Clock Five, our oversized alphanumeric LED clock/data display kit. His firmware adds two very welcome features: Automatic daylight saving time (DST) correction, and automatic time setting via a GPS module. It works remarkably well.
Here, we’ll show you how to hook it all up and how to use it.
This project interfaces an Alpha Clock Five (either the classic red or newer white version), to the Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout. For constructing a cable between the two, we will modify a “rainbow” 6-pin F-F header socket cable, and we’ll also need to run one more wire to provide power to the GPS module.
I’ve posted a new video of the small GPS clock project I have been working on this past week. It’s pretty easy to do, and only needs soldering on the GPS and LED units. You can mount everything to a breadboard, so you don’t need to commit the parts to the project permanently.
We carry a few different GPS modules here in the Adafruit shop, but none that satisfied our every desire – that’s why we designed this little GPS breakout board. We believe this is the Ultimate GPS module, so we named it that. It’s got everything you want and more!
I just finished making a clock for my work area using a 7 segment display,RTC (real time clock) and the RTC library. The nice thing about using this RTC is that it has a backup battery so if you lose power, it still maintains the time.
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Fairly easy setup. Both the RTC and the 7 segment display use 12c to communicate with the Arduino. Because they have different addresses this is ok. Adafruit has this handy chart of a lot of sensors and things and what their addresses are. The 7 segment display I used has an address of 0×70 and that is not yet on the chart, but can be found in the library RTClib.
Today we’re releasing a major update to Alpha Clock Five, our alphanumeric LED desk clock, alarm clock, and data display device.
Alpha Clock Five still has five remarkably bright, remarkably huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays. But for version 2.0, we’ve rewritten the firmware from scratch. It’s packed with new features and it is simply a joy to use.
The firmware is upgradable and we’ve still got some Alpha Clocks Five in stock!
Getting the big question right out of the way: no, we won’t be selling these. Legally, we can’t, for trademark reasons. But it’s generally okay for anyone to create replica props for their own personal use, so we hope this writeup will inspire some cool projects among our readers…
This shot shows an Adafruit Ultimate GPS (MTK3339), an Adafruit Temperature + Barometric Pressure Sensor (BMP085), a Itead rotary encoder (push button with 20 points), a DealExtreme J12865 (SKU 121820 with ST7920 controller) and an Arduino Uno.
I need to get this bunch of parts into a case so I can move it around easily and get on with programming it. Clever people will have notice my dodgy stacking of pins/connectors.
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Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout – 66 channel w/10 Hz updates [MTK3339 chipset]. We carry a few different GPS modules here in the Adafruit shop, but none that satisfied our every desire – that’s why we designed this little GPS breakout board. We believe this is the Ultimate GPS module, so we named it that. It’s got everything you want and more, with -165 dBm sensitivity, 5V friendly design, breadboard friendly, mounting holes, 10 Hz updates, 66 channels, RTC battery-compatible and has a status LED all for under $40! The newest version we carry (using the MTK3339 chipset, as of March 26th) adds built in datalogging capability and high altitude functionality with even lower power.
The breakout is built around the MTK3339 chipset, a no-nonsense, high-quality GPS module that can track up to 22 satellites on 66 channels, has an excellent high-sensitivity receiver (-165 dB tracking!), and a built in antenna. It can do up to 10 location updates a second for high speed, high sensitivity logging or tracking. Power usage is incredibly low, only 20 mA during navigation.
Best of all, we added all the extra goodies you could ever want: a ultra-low dropout 3.3V regulator so you can power it with 3.3-5VDC in, 5V level safe inputs, ENABLE pin so you can turn off the module using any microcontroller pin or switch, a footprint for optional CR1220 coin cell to keep the RTC running and allow warm starts and a tiny bright red LED. The LED blinks at about 1Hz while it’s searching for satellites and blinks once every 15 seconds when a fix is found to conserve power. If you want to have an LED on all the time, we also provide the FIX signal out on a pin so you can put an external LED on.
Two things that really stand out about the new MTK3339-based module is the high-altitude functionality and the the built in data-logging capability. Most modules permit NMEA output only when the module is traveling under 515 mph AND when its at an altitude of under 60,000 ft (18,000 m). This is to prevent the modules from being used for military use. However, as the requirements are not as strict, we’ve requested the factory to keep the speed limit but remove the altitude restriction. We trust that the factory has removed the limit but we have not done independent verification yet. If this feature is critical, please do not purchase until we’ve personally verified it!
The other cool feature of the new MTK3339-based module (which we have tested with great success) is the built in datalogging ability. Since there is a microcontroller inside the module, with some empty FLASH memory, the newest firmware now allows sending commands to do internal logging to that FLASH. The only thing is that you do need to have a microcontroller send the “Start Logging” command. However, after that message is sent, the microcontroller can go to sleep and does not need to wake up to talk to the GPS anymore to reduce power consumption. The time, date, longitude, latitude, and height is logged every 15 seconds and only when there is a fix. The internal FLASH can store about 16 hours of data, it will automatically append data so you don’t have to worry about accidentally losing data if power is lost. It is not possible to change what is logged and how often, as its hardcoded into the module but we found that this arrangement covers many of the most common GPS datalogging requirements.
As hard as it might be to believe, I had never built an electronic clock of any kind. I’ve always thought electronic clocks were passe and not worth the time to design and build one. In addition, I thought that all interesting electronic clocks designs had already been built so why bother building an also ran. However as I was looking around for something to do with the 15′ of RGB LED ribbon (LPD8806) I purchased from AdaFruit it occurred to me that I could use a short segment of the ribbon (14 LEDs worth) to build a unique electronic clock which used the RGB LEDs to display the time, date and a few animated patterns. I already had a SparkFun Pro Micro Arduino compatible micro controller module handy so the only part I was lacking was a real time clock (RTC) module. I wanted to use a battery backed up RTC module to make the clock accurate, reliable and impervious to power failure. I chose the ChronoDot ultra precise RTC module from Adafruit speced at less than a minute of drift per year. Designing the LED clock circuitry was easy because of the small number of parts involved. See the schematic at the bottom of this page for the details. To simplify the design I decided to power the clock via USB so no power supply components were required. With all of the parts in hand I breadboarded the circuitry and wrote the software for the LED clock using the Arduino 1.0 IDE. The software for the LED clock is freely available here. If you use and/or modify the LED clock software and redistribute it, I would appreciate an attribution.
These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 30 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control the entire strip at once with any microcontroller and three transistors. The way they are wired, you will need a 9-12VDC power supply and then ground the R/G/B pins to turn on the three colors. Use any NPN or N-channel MOSFET (although the big powerful kind is good for a large strip) and PWM the inputs for color-mixing.
Hello, I had send you before my new project, a six IV-11 vfd tube clock. Today I just finished a homemade wooden case for it. If you want you can see some photos on my photo stream. Also the photos have been added at the end of the clock’s article.
Here you can find my latest project a six IV-11 vfd tube clock designed in a
simple format using Atmega168 and MAX6921. It is a design came after
studying other vfd tube clocks including yours Ice Tube Clock.
Most Ice Tube problems can be traced to component placement or soldering. If you run into trouble, first verify component placement and solder joints as described in the following FAQ…
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.
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