adafruit industries blog » clocks & watches

Open Clock Project

Tyler Cooper — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:27:15 +0000

The Open Clock Project is…

An intuitive, adaptive, and delightful touchscreen alarm clock.

Easy to see with uncorrected vision, and easy to set with confidence, even when tired.

An open hardware work-in-progress.

Powered by Arduino, curiosity, and ignorance.

This is a journal of the design and prototyping process, starting with a February 2012 rant about what I dislike about every alarm clock I’ve met. I didn’t know much about electronics, but that hasn’t stopped me yet!

My discoveries are recorded here, for the benefit of present and future Citizens of the Makerverse.

Lots of Adafruit products in this project, including the Adafruit Proto Shield, Chronodot, Wave Shield, and Arduino UNO, and more!

Wearable Atomic Clock

bill — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:46:48 +0000

From The Register:

Could this be the chronometrist’s ultimate timepiece, the peak of horological haute couture? British bespoke movement maker Hoptroff today claimed to have produced the world’s first personal chronometer with an on board atomic clock.
…
Inside the case, Hoptroff has crammed a lithium-polymer battery fed through a micro USB port. It has also built in a Bluetooth radio, plus humidity, temperature and pressure sensors, and even a magnetometer – all of which help drive the 28 dials that make up the watch’s face.

Read more:

Smarthomewatch: Hacking on Pebble Watch For Home Automation

Matt — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Check out this home automation project for the Pebble watch from Enrico on makr.com:

I really enjoyed my pebble (too bad caller ID is not working, yet), and i’m very happy to have been one the sponsors of the “rise of the smartwatch” series.

pair this brand new gadget with my interests in home automation, add the release of the pebble sdk, stir it with some juicy python examples, and there you are: a smarthomewatch!

first things first.

to start you need to have a working libpebble setup. i followed the pretty clear readme of this github homepage.

i followed the advice of using the lightblue library as the wrapper around bluetooth stack: looks pretty outdated, but works even on my up-to-date mountain lion powerbook.

if this is your case, before trying to use the libpebble scripts, follow the instructions you can find here. (that’s a fork adapted to run on macos 10.8)

as soon as i drilled down inside the clean code of the “p.py” file, i realized how easy it would have been to tweak it, and thought: how about that ETH-RLY ethernet relay board i played with in python some weeks ago?

let’s glue them together … and the first smarthomewatch was born! to avoid having to set up a specific application i used the “music” menu, putting my relay list as if it was a playlist, using the play/pause button as a relay toggle.

the code i’m posting is pretty draft, looking more like a hack of the original file, rather than a proper software module. but hey: it works! …

MarioChron Ported to Pebble Watch #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:57:25 +0000

Trammel Hudson writes:

A year ago Super Awesome Sylvia demoed MarioChron for the Adafruit MonoChron dekstop clock kit. It’s really neat — once per minute Mario hits the box and receives a coin, so his score is equal to the time. Now thanks to the GPL license on the code, you can carry it on your wrist with the port of MarioChron to the Pebble Smart Watch.

Homemade Circuit Board Wrist Watch #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Dangerous Prototypes board member matseng writes:

DaTajm is a wristwatch based on a PIC16F1824 powered by a single CR1216 lithium coin cell. I’m using a sandwich of three PCBs. The topmost pcb (0.8mm thick) have 12 leds and a resistive touchpad on the top side and all the other parts on the bottom. The middle pcb (1.6mm( is just a spacer for the battery. The bottom pcb have a contact for the positive pole of the battery and a soldered cable up to the top pcb.

Optimizing the QR Clock Code

Tyler Cooper — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:24:55 +0000

Optimizing the QR Clock Code

When I original wrote the clock’s firmware, it took about 7 seconds to generate a QR code. Of course, this was without refreshing the display. The display needs to be refreshed at least two dozen times a second, and these interruptions extended the QR generation time to around 40 seconds.

This was far too long to generate a QR code every second, but it could definitely update once a minute which is all that was absolutely necessary for a clock. I’ve never done something so computationally intensive on an AVR before, so I just assumed that 45 seconds was a reasonable amount of time. While it would have been nice to update every second, I was amazed I got it to work at all.

…

Regardless of the fact that my clock doesn’t meet the guidelines for border thickness, he linked to a library that was supposedly able to generate a QR code in less than a second. This got me thinking that it might be worth trying to optimize my code before resigning to a once a minute update.

With my shipment date just around the corner, I thought it’d be fun to discuss what I discovered.

Pebble Smart Watch Class/Hackathon at NYC Resistor #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:13:21 +0000

Trammell Hudson @ NYC Resistor writes:

What time is it? It’s time to #MakeAwesomeHappen and learn to program the new Pebble Smart Watch! We’ll be teaching a three hour class on 18 May on how to write custom watch faces that work with the official Pebble SDK. The programming environment is low-level C, with no memory protection, and no emulator nor a debugger, so you’ll need to be fairly comfortable with writing embedded code or at least not afraid to debug with printf()*. If you’ve programmed a device like an Arduino you should be ok with the class. Tickets for the class are on sale for $125. The hackathon afterwards is free!

Flickr Pool Friday – Memento Mori Timekeeping

Becky Stern — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Martin Bircher posted this rad photo of his installation Memento Mori:

The Memento Mori installation consists of a 4 digit LED display, which is mounted between the teeth of a casted human skull and connected to a highly accurate rubidium atomic clock. The display visualizes the passage of time by repeatedly counting down one second in millisecond-steps (from 1.000 to .001).

By utilizing atomic clocks, we can determine with unimaginable accuracy how quickly the irretrievable essence of our lives is decreasing, how fast the ultimate yet unknown point in time of our death is approaching – millisecond by millisecond. This Memento Mori is not only an ironic reminder of our own mortality but a reflection of the values we are striving for. Despite all the hyper-accurate technology inhabiting our lives the haunting question of “When?” still remains unanswered.

Want to be featured on Flickr pool Friday? Add your Adafruits to the Adafruit Flickr pool.

DIY Binary Watch #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Binary watch by Emanuele via Hackaday

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Download Special Adafruit Kit Enclosures From Thingiverse

Matt — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0000

The crew over at MakerBot shared some more designs for the three DIY electronics kits we included in the MakerBot Adafruit Edition, and we have been having fun printing these out in-house ourselves!

From the MakerBot blog:

A few days ago we and our good friends over at Adafruit announced a limited Adafruit edition of the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer available for sale. The whole batch sold out in 33 hours.

As others have pointed out, this makes total sense. Adafruit customers are total DIY heroes who would naturally want to make their own customized enclosures and components. You know what’s perfect for doing that? A MakerBot.

Right now you can pick up three of Adafruit’s most popular kits at the MakerBot Store in NYC: TIMESQUARE, RasPi, and MintyBoost. To sweeten the deal, we’ve launched our own special designs for the enclosures for these three kits, seen in the photo above, on our own Thingiverse page.

Open Clock Project, fully functional working prototype #3dthursday

Matt — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Here’s a great project shared on the Adafruit Forums! The final stages of completing an Arduino-powered real time Clock. And check out the great 3D printed case! From Open Clock Project.

One year later: a fully functional working prototype is complete!

The Waveshield memory constraint was solved by tricking the code into using a smaller buffer size. Diagnosis and helpful discussion on the topic with the good folks at Adafruit.

The code still needs some improvement, notably a way to “snooze” the alarm. And perhaps some devious trick to prevent a sleepy user from turning it off (a math test, perhaps!). And I need to work a bit more on the enclosure, to make it easier to build without a 3D printer.

But that’s just icing. My bad old alarm clock has now been officially retired!

A Game for the Adafruit TIMESQUARE Watch Kit!

Matt — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Check out this cool game project created using the Adafruit TIMESQUARE watch kit and shared on the Adafruit Support Forums:

The Timesquare watch is a great little project. Just to experiment with it, I made a simple bat and ball game that runs on the watch.

Here’s the code, forked from the Adafruit Timesquare repo.

The specific file for the game screen can be found here.

And here’s a YouTube video of the game.

This was mostly just to see what I could do, but hopefully somebody finds it useful/fun.

Featured Adafruit Product!

TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit – Tangerine Display Matrix: Show up stylish AND on time to any event with this awesome looking DIY watch. We have a few watch kits here at Adafruit but we finally have one that looks good and fits well, even for ladies and kids and others with smaller wrists and hands. Its got a 8×8 bit matrix display and a repurposed silicone watch band for a professional look. (read more)

Time Square Watch Kit Mini Review

Tyler Cooper — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:00:14 +0000

Adam Wishneusky built the Adafruit Time Square Watch kit and approves!

I soldered the components for this watch All By Myself like a big boy. It was fun!

Show up stylish AND on time to any event with this awesome looking DIY watch. We have a few watch kits here at Adafruit but we finally have one that looks good and fits well, even for ladies and kids and others with smaller wrists and hands. Its got a 8×8 bit matrix display and a repurposed silicone watch band for a professional look.

In Stock and Shipping Now!

Prototyping the QR Clock Version 2.0

Tyler Cooper — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:33:13 +0000

Over on the ch00ftech blog they have a really good post about their adventures prototyping their QR Clock 2.0.

After the success and popularity of my original QR Clock, I decided it might be a fun challenge to redesign the clock into a more attractive and lower-cost form factor. The end goal is to make this the flagship product that gets my Ch00ftech Store on its feet. Before I could start worrying about manufacturing and shipping, I needed a new prototype, so this post is to tell you about what I’ve changed.

I addressed a number of mechanical and electrical problems that I had with the original design, but this time around, I’ve also addressed some of the pricing and supply chain issues I had before. This clock is actually much cheaper to make than the original, and getting it that way involved some new experiences for me.

TIMESQUARE Watch Class Results!

Becky Stern — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Trammell Hudson writes in about the TIMESQUARE watch class he held at NYC Resistor:

We had a great class yesterday. Four of the students had never soldered before, but the kits went together really easily and all eight worked on the first try. We took a little longer on the assembly than I had expected — 2.5 hours instead of 1.5 — and as a result the software portion was a little bit shorter than I had planned. Everyone successfully compiled and re-flashed their watches using the arduino IDE and the FTDI friend, so they should be in good shape for experimenting with them.

TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit in five colors!

“Ok to Wake” Clock Project

Matt — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:00 +0000

A great project from the Adafruit Forums:

What my wife is hounding me to buy is an ‘ok to wake’ clock for our 2 year old son that has just transitioned to a toddler bed. Basically, between certain hours it indicates via colored light that it is not okay to get up, the lights are off, or a color to indicate that it is ok to wake up. Right now there is not a kit for it. But I saw some parts that might work….

For the most part, the project is complete. There are a few coding tweaks that I might make. For instance that the OK to wake time is changes based upon the day of the week (later on weekends and earlier during the week).

Overall, I like the enclosure but I am only about 90% happy with it for this application. It is really tight fitting everything in there. I wanted to put some buttons on the top to be able to change the time but there just wasn’t enough room. The bi-color matrix is a little too big for the opening and I couldn’t get it to line up properly to when connected to the protoboard. I will probably make some sort of front panel cover to make it a little more kid friendly and to hide the very slight gap for the matrix and the opening.

The project used: Arduino Uno, chrono dot, bi-color matrix, RGB LCD display, Protoshield PCB, and Arduino enclosure

NYC Resistor TIMESQUARE Watch Class Tomorrow!

Matt — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:00:00 +0000

If you are in the New York City area this weekend, there are still a couple of slots open at the NYC Resistor TIMESQUARE watch class for this weekend!.

Have you ever wanted to wear an Arduino on your wrist and tell the time with a giant LED matrix? Then you’ll love this three hour class at NYC Resistor that I’ll be teaching on February 9th. During the class you can learn how to solder through-hole components as we put together the Adafruit Timesquare DIY watch kit, and afterwards we will extend the watch firmware to add a new feature to the watch.

This class is a great introduction to soldering and some advanced embedded programming techniques. The coin-cell powered Timesquare watch isn’t exactly a normal Arduino and is very CPU limited, so techniques for limiting power consumption, waking up from deep sleep with interrupt handlers, low voltage brownout detection and some inline AVR assembly will be discussed. If you just want to learn to solder and have a very stylish wristwatch, you don’t have to stay for the walkthrough of the firmware.

Included in the class price for every student is a pre-programmed Adafruit Timesquare watch kit and an FTDI cable for re-programming it (a $49 value). You’ll need to bring your own laptop with the Arduino IDE installed to flash new firmware onto the device if you are staying for the advanced portion of the class.

Click here to buy tickets at eventbrite!

Featured Adafruit Products!

TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit – Red Display Matrix: Show up stylish AND on time to any event with this awesome looking DIY watch. We have a few watch kits here at Adafruit but we finally have one that looks good and fits well, even for ladies and kids and others with smaller wrists and hands. Its got a 8×8 bit matrix display and a repurposed silicone watch band for a professional look.

64 LEDs light up to tell you the time in a variety of ways. Built into the kit are 3 different watch ‘faces’ – a scrolling marquee with time and date, a binary watch display (for geeks, robots and binary fans), and a moon phase display (for beach-combers, werewolves). There’s also a built in battery meter so you can check your battery life. Want to make your own watch? Easy! The microcontroller is an Arduino-compatible, all you need is an FTDI Friend and the Arduino IDE and you can design your own watch faces and upload them to the TIMESQUARE. (read more)

3D Printed Watch Body for the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit: Love the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch kit and have a great idea for a custom watch body you would like to fabricate to house the electronic parts? The watch kit already ships with style to spare, but that’s no reason to limit yourself to the included watch band when you can make one. Here are the steps I took to create the “Circling the Square” TIMESQUARE Watch Body. As I guide you through the steps I followed, I will share plenty of tips and tricks for how you can design your own! (read more)

Doomsday Atomic “Alpha Clock Five” Project using the Teensy 3

Matt — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Check out this great “doomsday” clock project shared on the Adafruit Forums – with as many sources for accurate time and place as you could hope for! As the sources to keep this clock accurate go down, the person reading the clock knows that it is time to hit the bunkers and prepare for the end of the world. Check out the list further down for all of the awesome Adafruit gear used for this project, and read just below for notes from the Doomsday Atomic Alpha Clock Five project page:

I wanted a clock that would display precision time and date in “all” worst case scenarios.
If this clock does not show the precise time then its time to gather up food, water, ammunition,
and the family and head for the underground bunker!

This could happen – imagine this scenario ….

The World Wide Web (Internet) goes down.
All the US Military global positioning satellites (GPS) stops working.
The 60Khz WWVB pulse radio towers (Atomic clock) at Fort Collins, Colorado cease operation.
The electrical power grid cease to function.
All cellphone towers are in-operational.
All POS telephone land lines stop functioning.
All TV and cable systems are in-operational.

It’s the end of civilization … Doomsday! Do you have the precision time and date?
I may be dead and long gone but my Doomsday Atomic Alpha Clock Five would be still functional, working and indicating the precision time!

In this project, we used a GPS, a WiFi Electric IMP (network time), a custom built WWVB Atomic radio receiver, two precision TXCO real time clocks (+- 2 PPM SPI DS3234 and I2C DS3232) and two micro controllers – (Teensy 3 ARM stamp & Arduino 328P clone). We then use the three precision clock sources (UNIX seconds) to drive or sync to the Evil Mad Scientist huge, very bright, “Alpha Clock Five” 2.5″ clock display.

And here is the list of Adafruit gear involved and further details about this project:

Alpha Clock Five kit
LCD I2C shield with 5 tact switches replaced by tact joystick (hacked or modified)
RGB backlight negative LCD 20×4 (modified to fit 2×16 LCD shield)
Ultimate GPS (modified-remote mounted fix LED)
+5 VDC to 3 VDC level converter (for I2C LCD)
INA219 High Side DC Current Sensor Breakout
Electric IMP SD WiFi card (modified for network time and status)
Tact joystick (modified for LCD display)
CR2032 battery holder(s) (Standardize battery holder for all lithium backups)
Spring loaded terminal blocks for 5 V bus bar
Protoboard for 5 V bus bar
Panel mount power connector 2.1 mm
Teensy 3 ARM Stamp

In our “DoomsDay Atomic Alpha Clock Five Project” we used a Ultimate GPS, a WiFi Electric IMP (network time), a WWVB Atomic radio receiver, two precision TXCO real time clocks (+- 2 PPM SPI DS3234 and I2C DS3232) and two microcontrollers – (Teensy 3 ARM stamp & Arduino 328P clone). We then use the three precision clock sources (UNIX seconds) to drive or sync to the Evil Mad Scientist huge, very bright, “Alpha Clock Five” 2.5″ clock display.

Simple Arduino Micro GPS Clock Project

Tyler Cooper — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:18:28 +0000

Jay put together a nice little video of a GPS clock he built using an Arduino Micro, an Adafruit Ultimate GPS module, and an Adafruit 4-Digit 7-Segment LED Display.

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.

Learn More

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!

In Stock and Shipping Now!

The Quite Rubbish Clock #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Matt — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:00:24 +0000

Check out this demo of the hilarious “Quite Rubbish” Clock (i.e. QR Clock) from Stewart Russell, a bit of fun poked at that darling of hipster advertising agencies, the QR Code — you need your phone or a computer decoder to read the time. (Don’t we all just use our cell phones for the time anyway?)

Check out his project site and code here, and we grabbed a bit of Liz’s piece from RaspberryPi.org below:

This is a clock built with the Raspberry Pi. It works, but it’s not readable by humans: instead, you find out the time by scanning the QR code it outputs with your phone.

Stewart Russell knocked this together not because he wanted to know what time it was (just as well, really), but because he was interested in trying to get the Pi to interface with an old surplus Nokia LCD display via SPI. If you want to have a go at something similar yourself, Stewart has all the code, wiring and parts lists you need at his blog. These little LCD displays are very inexpensive and aren’t hard to find; if Stewart’s QR clock has given you an idea for another LCD project, please let us know in the comments!

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

TIMESQUARE Watch Class at NYC Resistor February 9

Becky Stern — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Trammell Hudson at NYCR writes:

Have you ever wanted to wear an Arduino on your wrist and tell the time with a giant LED matrix? Then you’ll love this three hour class at NYC Resistor that I’ll be teaching on February 9th. During the class you can learn how to solder through-hole components as we put together the Adafruit Timesquare DIY watch kit, and afterwards we will extend the watch firmware to add a new feature to the watch.

This class is a great introduction to soldering and some advanced embedded programming techniques. The coin-cell powered Timesquare watch isn’t exactly a normal Arduino and is very CPU limited, so techniques for limiting power consumption, waking up from deep sleep with interrupt handlers, low voltage brownout detection and some inline AVR assembly will be discussed. If you just want to learn to solder and have a very stylish wristwatch, you don’t have to stay for the walkthrough of the firmware.

Included in the class price for every student is a pre-programmed Adafruit Timesquare watch kit and an FTDI cable for re-programming it (a $49 value). You’ll need to bring your own laptop with the Arduino IDE installed to flash new firmware onto the device if you are staying for the advanced portion of the class.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite. Hopefully some folks will experiment with 3D printing custom watch bodies!

E-Ink Watch #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:01:00 +0000

New project by Central Standard Timing released at CES (has already reached their fundraising goal):

The CST-01 is assembled by laminating thin, flexible components into a 0.5mm pocket etched into a single piece of flexible stainless steel. In order to make the watch as thin and minimal as possible, there are no buttons or knobs on the watch itself. Charging and setting the time is done on the included base station, and for those outside the US who prefer a 24 hour time format, this is also user selectable from the base station.

via Core77

NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – WHITE – From Evil Mad Scientist Labs!

Becky Stern — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:19:01 +0000

NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – WHITE – 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 dazzling white, 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 white, 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.

In stock and shipping now!

Tnychron Clock

Becky Stern — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:35:59 +0000

uhclem on Instructables writes:

Have you ever seen a pocket calculator from the 1970s? If you have, you know that many used a series of tiny, red, LED seven-segment displays. These displays used little “bars” of light-emitting material which were placed behind little magnifying bubbles to make them more readily visible. They were very crisp and readable, and used a lot less power than vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD), which were also in use at that time.

I recall the little LED bubble displays were at one time in all sorts of handheld electronics and, in a slightly different form, watches. By the time LCDs became cheap in the late 1970′s, the more power-hungry LED display was on its way out.

I was pleasantly surprised back in 2011 to find on ebay a seller with numerous rails of HP 5082-7433 LED displays. These are three-digit displays in a 12-pin standard DIP format. I bought a few rails since the price was good. I’ve a tendency to get “stuff” and then never get around to using it so I decided this time there would be a project to make use of all the displays.

The “Tnychron” clock was born!

We spotted a DC Boarduino in the prototype!

Timesquare Watch Case: Circling the Square by Adafruit

Matt — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000

As shared on Ask An Engineer last night, here is our work-in-progress watch enclosure, launched today as Thingiverse Thing 39040. We are looking forward to the seeing the prints and new designs that come out of this project!

From Thingiverse:

The Adafruit community has been enjoying the new TIMESQUARE DIY Watch kits so much that we wanted to offer another fun activity for our community to enjoy!

Adafruit’s Matt Griffin took a stab at making a watch enclosure that transforms the right angles of the original kit into quite a different friendly, organic shape. And what’s more this can be attached to the strap of a backpack or worn as a necklace fob or pocket watch.

Featured Adafruit Product!

Engineered for greatness by PaintYourDragon, this watch squeezes 500-1000 full time displays out of a coin battery, and a up to one year ‘resting’ lifetime, so you can use this as a day-to-day time keeper.
(read more)

Adafruit Ice Tube Clock Kit Customer Review

Tyler Cooper — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:00:52 +0000

Rusty Nail Workshop took some time to review the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock Kit (Spoiler: they like it).

While browsing one of our favorite electronic supplier’s web sites, we found that Ladyada sells a really interesting looking clock that uses a vacuum florescent display with eight glowing digits. This clock proved to be an excellent soldering instruction project for a younger Rusty Nail Workshop helper.

The most interesting feature is the display, which is similar to those found on VCRs, old car radios, and microwave ovens. The vacuum florescent display was invented in 1967 in Japan and hundreds of millions are used annually around the world. They are different than an LCD in that they use a filament to emit electrons which are diffused by grids. The electrons strike a phosphor-coated plate and emit light, and can be manufactured to emit light in different colors.

This kit comes with numerous electronic parts, all of which must be hand soldered to a printed circuit board. The instructions from Ladyada are excellent, and each step is accompanied by a helpful photograph. Our first step in the assembly process was to take an inventory of the parts we had received. Everything was accounted for, although some of our capacitors were slightly different than those in the Ladyada instructions, but not confusingly different.

Read the rest of the review here. Learn more about the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock Kit, and pick one up for yourself here.

LED Star Clock Project

Matt — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:00:03 +0000

Here’s a cool star clock project that takes advantage of bunch of great Adafruit gear, created by Eric Scott:

A Christmas gift I made for my wife from an Arduino Leonardo,
2×16 LCD I2C Shield, ChronoDot, 12mm diffused LED pixel strand, and 5V power supply. Hour and nearest 5 minutes are indicated on the clock face with separate colors, a third color when they overlap. The five points fade from purple to blue over 1 minute, when all are blue the minute hand ticks over.

She likes things that light up, and I have a “star” theme going this year. Perusing my favorite electronic supply sites I came upon these Adafruit addressable LED strings. Very similar to a product I’d used in the past (ThingM BlinkM) but cheaper, and you don’t need to set each unit’s address.

It took me a couple of days to work out a concept to take advantage of the lights. What I would do is to make a clock with the LEDs changing color to indicate the position of the hands. 12 of the LEDs will make up the face, and then 5 additional ones will occupy the points of the star, pulsing to indicate seconds, similar to the way the light on my Macbook Pro pulses while sleeping.

To make the major portion of the clock I used a piece of white delrin plastic. This part is just slightly smaller than the table travel of the mill. Additionally both sides of the part need to be machined, which further complicates the setup and fixturing. To begin, I cut the holes in the back side of the clock to hold the LEDs. The 12 central holes are for the “hand” display, and the 5 peripheral holes for the pulsing star points. The large central cavity provides a convenient place to stash the RTC (real time clock) chip which keeps track of date and time with a battery backup.

Featured Adafruit Products!

12mm Diffused Thin Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801: RGB Pixels are digitally-controllable lights you can set to any color, or animate. Each RGB LED and controller chip is molded into a ‘dot’ of silicone. The dots are weatherproof and rugged. There are four flanges molded in so that you can ‘push’ them into a 12mm drill hole in any material up to 1.5mm/0.06″ thick. They’re typically used to make outdoor signs. We also have flat-backed pixels that are essentially the same, but are not as long and thin. (read more)

ChronoDot – Ultra-precise Real Time Clock – v2.1: The ChronoDot RTC is an extremely accurate real time clock module, based on the DS3231 temperature compensated RTC (TCXO). It includes a CR2016 battery (not shown, but included in the product) which should last at least 8 years if the I2C interface is only used while the device has 5V power available. No external crystal or tuning capacitors are required.
(read more)

TIMESQUARE Display Hack

PhilB — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:00:20 +0000

Quick legibility hack for the Adafruit TIMESQUARE DIY watch kit: a couple layers of Kapton tape applied to the watch face make it less prone to washing out under bright light. The tape’s color is similar enough to the red LEDs that they shine through with little difficulty, while most ambient light is blocked.

Rubylith film (from a decent old-school art supply store) would probably work as well, if not better. But electronics types might already have the Kapton tape around.

(Sorry, doesn’t help you read binary.)

New Tutorial: OLED TRON Clock @ Adafruit Learning System

Tyler Cooper — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:27:34 +0000

New Tutorial: OLED TRON Clock @ Adafruit Learning System

While watching Tron for the umpteenth time, I started thinking about how data could be displayed in abstract, but still readable, ways. The OLED display, with its crispness, seemed like a good fit for what I had in mind. After considering a few different options, I settled on building a stylized clock display. Learn how to make your own.

Learn More

TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit (video) #WearableWednesday

Becky Stern — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:45:09 +0000

See our new TIMESQUARE Watch Kit in all it’s blinky glory in this video that shows you the watch’s features, tells you how to set the time, and overviews the trickier parts of assembly. Check it out on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo.

DIY Seven Segment LED Clock Project

Tyler Cooper — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:10:01 +0000

Check out this neat seven segment LED clock project using a variety of Adafruit components.

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.

…

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.

Used in this project are the Adafruit 0.56″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack, DS1307 Real Time Clock breakout board kit, and Adafruit Perma-Proto Half-sized Breadboard PCB.

DIY LED Pocket Watch

Tyler Cooper — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 07:00:36 +0000

Check out this fantastic LED pocket watch by Frank Zhao

This is a LED pocket watch. It has 12 LEDs to show the hour, 60 LEDs to show the minute, and 60 LEDs to show the second. The LEDs are arranged in three rings. There is a button on the top to activate the pocket watch, and a button on the back to change modes and settings.

The battery is a rechargable lithium ion coin cell battery and it is charged from a micro USB connector. The battery life depends on how heavily the pocket watch is used, but if you leave it alone, it is estimated to last several months. There is a low battery indication feature. This pocket watch also feature a buzzer and a vibration motor, which are used for the alarm feature, and the motor causes a short “tick” as each second passes by. The pocket watch is constructed of a PCB, two pieces of laser cut clear acrylic plastic, and a 3D printed casing.

Head on over to Instructables to check out Frank’s build log, and get the files to make your own. Also, don’t forget to vote for Frank’s LED pocket watch by clicking the Vote ribbon in the upper right hand corner of the Instructables page.

Big Ben by MakeALot #3dthursday

Matt — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Check out this great Big Ben model from MakeALot on Thingiverse:

“Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower, officially named Elizabeth Tower” – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ben

Check out Thingiverse Thing #33913.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has thrilled us at Adafruit with its passion and dedication to making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed that our community integrating electronics projects into 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you take considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless EL Wire and LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you have a cool project you’ve made that joins the traditions of 3D printing and electronics, be sure to send it in to be featured here!

Laser Cut DinoClock

Matt — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Here’s a great custom DinoClock from Steve Bullock that he created with the help of the Adafruit laser cutting resources. Thanks for sharing this with us, Steve!

A friend of mine had a birthday recently and I wanted to make her something cool and personal.

She’s a pretty special person – a Dino Ranger at Bristol Zoo! Not sure there’s anyone else in the world with her job title and skill set… palaeontology, science, teaching, presenting… look her up!

I was inspired by record clocks on etsy, but there was nothing that was just right for her, and they were expensive! DIY-making to the rescue! In the past I’ve ordered stuff cut at online services, but now I’m lucky enough to have access to a laser cutter at work! This is my first self-cut laser project, and the tutorials at Adafruit gave me some confidence to get started – but what to make?

I had an image of my friend running her first tour at the zoo, next to their giant t-rex animatronic dino!

Adafruit Bicolor LED Matrix Used for QR Clock!

Matt — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Really awesome project from Ch00ftech that uses an Adafruit Bicolor LED Square Pixel Matrix to poke fun at the ubiquitous QR codes in marketing these days — that, well, nobody really uses! (And while he mentions wondering what the project would have looked like with a White LED Matrix, we really love the amber look the Bicolor offered!)

What the hell?

Right? This is an idea I had at some point along my four day drive across the country. QR codes are very popular for some reason. Marketers insist that they’re useful and demand to put them in everything despite the fact that nobody uses them.

The real problem with QR codes is that they force people to use a machine to translate what could easily be human-readable information. Rather than a QR code, why not just show the text “Chevy.com” or even better just the word “Chevy” because everyone knows how to google stuff? Seriously, I’ve seen QR codes on highway billboard signs as if anyone is going to whip out their smartphone while they’re pulling 65.

So why a clock? As I’ve said before, clocks have already sort of been perfected. A digital wristwatch is probably the most convenient, accurate, and durable way to tell the time possible. Any attempt to change the typical blue-light special wristwatch will only make it more expensive or harder to read. This clock attempts to do both.

Also, this clock points out the ultimate irony of QR codes which is that they are a technological convenience that really isn’t convenient. In order to read this clock, the user will require some sort of QR scanning device which is guaranteed to have a time-telling function built into it already.

So, that’s why I made it. Hilarious, right?

Adafruit Bicolor LED Square Pixel Matrix with I2C Backpack

What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small colorful display is to use a 1.2″ Bi-color 8×8 LED Matrix. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control all the 128 LEDs you need 24 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can help control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in. We have them in three flavors – a mini 8×8, 1.2″ Bi-color 8×8 and a 4-digit 0.56″ 7-segment. They work perfectly with the matrices we stock in the Adafruit shop and make adding a bright little display trivial. It’s called a Bicolor LED, but you can have 3 colors total by turning on the red and green LEDs, which creates yellow. That’s 3 colors for the price of 2!

The matrices use a driver chip that does all the heavy lifting for you: They have a built in clock so they multiplex the display. They use constant-current drivers for ultra-bright, consistent color, 1/16 step display dimming, all via a simple I2C interface. The backpacks come with address-selection jumpers so you can connect up to four mini 8×8′s or eight 7-segments/bicolor (or a combination, such as four mini 8×8′s and two 7-segments and two bicolor, etc) on a single I2C bus.

The product kit comes with:

A fully tested and assembled LED backpack
1.2″ Bi-color 8×8 LED Matrix
4-pin header

A bit of soldering is required to attach the matrix onto the backpack but its very easy to do and only takes about 5 minutes.

Of course, in classic Adafruit fashion, we also have a detailed tutorial showing you how to solder, wire and control the display. We even wrote a very nice library for the backpacks so you can get running in under half an hour, displaying images on the matrix or numbers on the 7-segment. If you’ve been eyeing matrix displays but hesitated because of the complexity, his is the solution you’ve been looking for!

Understand and Manipulate Vector Displays

Tyler Cooper — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:29:40 +0000

NYC Resistor has a fantastic post about how vector displays work, and how you can turn them into clocks, or display graphics.

Vector displays are now mostly historical oddities — old arcade games like Asteroids or Tempest, or ancient FAA radar displays — which gives them a certain charm. Unlike modern raster displays, the electron beam in the CRT is not swept left to right and top to bottom for each row in the image. Instead the beam is steered to a point and traces the lines of the displayed image.

Most dual channel oscilloscopes have an XY mode in which the timebase is replaced by the second channel, so instead of a constant sweep frequency the two inputs to be plotted relative to each other. Generating low frequency analog voltages out of a small microcontroller with PWMthrough a low pass filter is quite common for adjusting the brightness of an LEd, but drawing complex shapes requires a faster way to change the voltage. One very easy way to do this is with an R-2R ladder DAC.

Read on for more details about how to build your own vector display hardware and some ways to draw shapes on your oscilloscope’s screen.

Click here to read the full blog post.

They used a Teensy, and Adafruit’s Perma-Proto boards for the custom vector display driver board.

Custom Clock Projects for #backtoschool

Tyler Cooper — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:08:51 +0000

There is nothing more important to a student than getting to class on time. We believe you should be able to wake up in style by building your own custom clock. Here are just a few of the many amazing clock hacks by Adafruit customers.

INTRUDERCHRON Code Shoots One Alien Per Second

Andrew D2010′s in-progress GPS clock

OLED Stylized Clock

RGB LED tape clock

Doctor Who MONOCHRON Clock

LED Clock Using a Raspberry Pi

Adafruit for Educators! #backtoschool

Please visit our educator’s section to learn more about:

Adafruit volume discounts and programs for educators, discounts galore!
Adafruit electronic kits, products, Arduino & Raspberry Pi products for education, we have’em!
Adafruit products and Arduino for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Used in schools!
The Adafruit System, the best way to learn electronics!
Adafruit iron-on “skill badges” / patches and partners, celebrate skills building!
Resources for educators, our picks for educators!
Adafruit for educators content on Adafruit.com, daily posts for educators!
Circuit Playground – iPad/iPhone App For Educators, volume discounts via Apple’s edu program!
Adafruit copyright permission for educators, educators can use them, hassle-free!

Visit.

Personalized Solder:Time Watch Case

Becky Stern — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Instructables user wbp made this Solder:Time watch case and writes:

This is a design for a case for the “Solder Time” watch available from Adafruit (and others). My son loved the watch but managed to break the case in a fall. I couldn’t find any design files so I made this one and we had it made. It fits great and even includes a couple of spare button pushers.

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!

Great Scott! DeLorean-Inspired Time Circuit Clock with Adafruit gear!

PhilB — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:29:02 +0000

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…

From the moment these LED displays made an appearance on our weekly Ask an Engineer show, comparisons were being made to the DeLorean time circuit from the Back to the Future films. It was a moral imperative then to make a demo! If you’re handy with Arduino and some shop tools, you should be able to pull off something similar (better, even), or adapt the ideas to other projects. This was quickly built in fun, so please don’t expect the same level of polish as a finished product tutorial.

Taking Some Liberties

When accepting this assignment, I might’ve failed to mention a small detail: I don’t own a car, let alone a DeLorean, for displaying the finished prop. Instead, mostly inspired by Jeri Ellsworth’s NES purse, I had this goofball idea of a slim, battery-powered device that could be placed in ironic settings: on a bicycle, on public transit, hung from a Flavor Flav necklace, and so forth.

While the general idea could have been accomplished quickly and easily with an iPad running the Flux Capacitor™ app, I wanted to preserve somewhat the staggered design of the original, and it had to have real 7-segment LED displays…there’s no substitute for seeing the genuine thing. In much the way that nixie tubes have a certain vintage coolness about them, LED displays too are reaching a nostalgic threshold, iconic of 1980s technology.

Using stock parts required some design compromises. The date and time formats would be changed to fit these 4-digit displays (the film prop used back-painted glass fakes for the month display, with some segment changes being physically impossible, making a 100% match unattainable anyway…iPad wins there). Also took liberties with some LED colors and various spacings, but overall the piece is still highly recognizable.

For the sake of a quick demo, I had to cut this short. Though all the displays are addressable, the destination and last-departed dates are simply fixed values from the first film; there’s no interaction. I may revisit this to add a keypad later, but for now it’s all just a fancy clock (it does show the current time accurately, using a ChronoDot RTC). Also, the vector files are not available, because they’re utter garbage! Creating something of finished kit quality requires many iterations and refinements…but with a rushed, one-shot piece like this, course corrections would come in the form of a Dremel tool and epoxy putty. If you plan to build one, give it some time and prepare your blueprint carefully.

Number Problems

These 4-digit displays can be assigned one of eight fixed I2C addresses via solder jumpers on the back. But the time circuit needs nine displays. A few possibilities were considered, including driving the one extra display “manually” with shift registers, or use a software I2C library and split the displays among multiple I2C buses. Either would require lots of library code changes and some intense concentration, but I was hit with a massive sinus headache at the time and really didn’t want to think about it.

Instead, exploiting the fact that we need just one way, write-only access to use the displays, I used a simple hardware hack to split the I2C bus to communicate with one row of three displays at a time (saving some code by repeating the same addresses in each row). The I2C data line fans out to all the displays as normal, but the clock feeds the enable lines of a 74HC138 3-to-8 line decoder, and the microcontroller can then select which output line forwards the clock signal. The data on the other I2C buses is ignored without the corresponding clock.

To keep this ultra slim, a Teensy microcontroller board was used — a standard Arduino wouldn’t fit, not even the headerless Leonardo. After prototyping the full circuit on a breadboard, all the parts were soldered point-to-point and “dead bug” style inside the case. Power is provided by three AA cells in series — a bit under the ideal 5 Volts, but still sufficient to run everything. The cells fit in the “chin” below the three dates. I’d mail-ordered a special battery holder for this, and then in my rush to complete the project I went ahead and made all the case parts based on the holder dimensions on a web site. Naturally then, with the case already cut and glued, the part that arrived was slightly larger than the dimensions posted. The fix was to break off the battery contacts from the ends of the holder and epoxy putty them directly into the case. This eliminated just enough girth for everything to fit. The remaining electronics were delicately folded into the case with copious amounts of hot-melt glue, tape and swearing.

The case was fabricated from laser-cut acrylic and sprayed with faux hammered metal paint. A metal enclosure would have been more authentic (and more work), but a corollary to “Maslow’s hammer” dictates that when you have a laser cutter, every project appears ideally suited to acrylic. The labels were inkjet printed and made into stickers with a Xyron applicator, trimmed with an X-Acto knife, then painstakingly touched up with a Sharpie marker to hide the white edges. After the labels were applied, the bezels received a thick spray of acrylic sealer, then attached to the front of the case with epoxy.

Go for it! If you don’t own a DeLorean, this will still impress your co-workers and look great on your desk. Or maybe you can devise a scheme around Halloween or a geek-fest like Dragon*Con. Bolt it just below the arc reactor on your Iron Man suit (you do have an Iron Man suit, right?). Or if you have a young son in a stroller, attach the time circuit to the tray, dress junior in mirrored shades and a ~~life preserver~~ down vest, while dad dons a Doc Brown getup. Instant father-son cloying adorableness!

Even if you don’t build this exact item, if it inspires any nifty electronics projects (*cough*Proton Pack*cough*), please share them in the forums, bring them to the Saturday night show-and-tell or document your build on a site like Instructables. Customer projects are frequently showcased on the Adafruit blog!

Resources

Here’s the Arduino sketch that runs the show.

Parts from the Adafruit store include:

Teensy (ATmega32u4 USB dev board)
ChronoDot Ultra-precise Real Time Clock
0.56″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack – Red
0.56″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack – Green
0.56″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack – Yellow
Diffused Red 3mm LED (note: film prop used yellow LEDs on destination time)
Diffused Green 3mm LED

Additional parts acquired from Digi-Key include:

Elsewhere:

Here’s an excellent DIY flux capacitor tutorial.
The Replica Prop Forum is a great resource for build assistance, hard-to-find parts and to show off your finished work.
YourProps likewise for original movie prop reference pics.
At Maker Faire Bay Area 2012, Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) gave an entertaining and impassioned talk (YouTube) about our compulsion to recreate our favorite big-screen icons.

Flickr Pool Friday – GPS Clock

Becky Stern — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 05:00:00 +0000

This week’s featured photo is Andrew D2010′s in-progress GPS clock. He writes:

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.

Want to be featured on Flickr pool Friday? Add your Adafruits to the Adafruit Flickr pool.

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.

Comes with one fully assembled and tested module, a piece of header you can solder to it for breadboarding, and a CR1220 coin cell holder. A CR1220 coin cell is not included, but we have them in the shop if you’d like to use the GPS’s RTC

Get started in a jiffy: wire up 3-5VDC to the VIN pin, GND is common ground, and listen on the TX pin for 9600 baud data. Then run our example sketch which will allow you to quickly set the update rate and select which NMEA sentences you want to have spit out. We will have example sketches for using the internal logging system shortly, please hold on while we clean it up!

Satellites: 22 tracking, 66 searching
Patch Antenna Size: 15mm x 15mm x 4mm
Update rate: 1 to 10 Hz
Position Accuracy: 1.8 meters
Velocity Accuracy: 0.1 meters/s
Warm/cold start: 34 seconds
Acquisition sensitivity: -145 dBm
Tracking sensitivity: -165 dBm
Maximum Altitude for MTK3329: 18,000 meters
Maximum Altitude for MTK3339: no limit
Maximum Velocity: 515m/s
Vin range: 3.0-5.5VDC
MTK3329 Operating current: 48mA tracking, 37 mA current draw during navigation
MTK3339 Operating current: 25mA tracking, 20 mA current draw during navigation
Output: NMEA 0183, 9600 baud default
DGPS/WAAS/EGNOS supported
FCC E911 compliance and AGPS support (Offline mode : EPO valid up to 14 days )
Up to 210 PRN channels
Jammer detection and reduction
Multi-path detection and compensation

Breakout board details:

Weight (not including coin cell or holder): 8.5g
Dimensions (not including coin cell or holder): 23mm x 35mm x 8mm / 0.9″ x 1.35″ x 0.3″

From the Adafruit Forums: Doctor Who MONOCHRON Clock

Tyler Cooper — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:13:19 +0000

Adafruit Forums user DanSlage posted this awesome update for his MONOCHRON Clock.

I am working on a Doctor Who inspired clock for the MonoChron.

The TARTIS travels through an wiggly wormhole. Pressing a button or switch (except “Menu”) will cause the TARTIS to dematerialize and rematerialize a moment later in a random spot. My daughter plans on using this as her primary alarm clock once I figure out how to replace the alarm siren with the Doctor Who theme song.

Review – The Solder: Time LED Watch

adafruit — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:18:49 +0000

Fun Beginner’s Electronic Project – The Solder: Time LED Watch @ MAKE. Mark and his daughter built the Solder: Time LED watch…

My daughter Jane told me she wanted to build something “electronic,” and luckily, I had a sample of the Solder: Time kit. It looked like a fun thing to make, and it turned to be so.

Available in the Maker Shed or here at Adafruit.

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.

In stock and shipping now!

A little bit of Times Square on your desk

PhilB — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:25:17 +0000

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…

The marine chronometer was the first mechanical clock of sufficient precision to determine a ship’s longitude, based on the difference in the displayed time and the observed “local noon” time. It was largely the work of a single person, English carpenter and self-taught clockmaker John Harrison (1693–1776), who persevered in developing and refining his invention despite being largely overlooked by the establishment.

From the 1820s through 1920s, major shipping ports worldwide were home to observatories equipped with time balls, large and sometimes brightly-colored spheres that could be easily seen from ships in the harbor. At a fixed time each day (typically 1pm local time), the time ball was dropped so that all ships could precisely synchronize their clocks.

Prior to the invention of the chronometer, global navigation could be a hit-or-miss, potentially deadly endeavor. Harrison’s clocks in their day were as significant an advancement to maritime safety as the later inventions of radio and GPS, and opened the world to trade and travel.

It all comes back to science. So, this New Year’s Eve, as you watch the ball drop, raise your glass in a toast to Mr. Harrison and his amazing clocks.

Image credits: By Clare Cridland (Macy’s Times Square crystal ball, New York City) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Chronometer, photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons. Greenwich Observatory, by Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons