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Episode 482: Gigantic 3D Printed 7 Segment Display Clock

element14 presents
Giant 3D Printed 7 Segment Display Clock

element14 presents  |  Lorraine Underwood's VCP Profile |  Project Videos

 

 

 

Lorraine wanted a clock for her workshop, but given she’s an element14 video content producer it wasn’t going to be any old clock! Follow Lorraine as she puts her own spin on a 3d print to create a unique timepiece you’ve never seen before. This is the first part of two videos about this clock. In the second video Lorraine will go through the different boards and the clocks potential different uses including an exercise stopwatch.

 

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Anonymous
  • in reply to feiticeir0

    an office would be a great place for a clock like this. Can your colleagues code? Have a hacking competition to change the time to home time!

  • in reply to koudelad

    Starting on a project is sometimes the most difficult part!

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Thanks Dave. I saw John's video after mine, he's such a pro! Great ideas for getting the diffusion right.

  • Uau ! That's a nice project !  Such a huge clock ! I wander if my office colleagues  would love to have something like that !

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Video on YouTube demonstrating the effect of distance vs diffusion here:

    https://youtu.be/WUU8AQsf2Zw?t=156

    (skip to 02:30 to see the test stand)

  • Yay! More clocks!

     

    I'm also on board with the 5-LED-per-segment group. Overall, though, it looks great--especially on the lab wall!

  • in reply to lorrainbow

    I will, but I am afraid it will take more than a few months, because I still work on the sensor part (usually only one or two evenings in a week). I would like to share the sensor part first, but I still haven't figured out how to present my findings over the last 9 months of indoor measurements.

     

    I also realized I still have a bag of 60 yellow LEDs and have a temptation to arrange them in a ring as minutes and add 12 red/green for hours. This could probably work on one of the Nucleo-144 boards even without a set of shift registers.

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    John Park demonstrates a method for getting good diffusion with large 7-segment displays here:

     

    Assemble Panels | Ninja Timer: Giant 7-Segment Display | Adafruit Learning System

     

    May be of interest / worth giving it a try.

  • in reply to koudelad

    Thanks David. Your clock sound really useful, I hope you share it as you make it.

  • I like the project, ! Very colorful, like your workshop I am thinking of building something similar, I've  always liked big numbers which are easy to read from across the room. I haven't seen any ready made, but these are much better and customizable.

     

    I would also vote for 5 LEDs instead of 3 in each segment.

     

    You also asked for other uses - my plan is to have 4 - 6 numbers and dots (double dot) between some of them, so they could generally display numbers with a few digits and decimal places. Then it could display various things from my sensor (meteo-like) station and be variable using colours. Different colour can mean a different quantity being displayed or just colour formatting similar in Excel.

     

    For example

    • outside temperature: negative temperature in blue, positive red (or even finer scale with more colours clearly signaling what to put on when going outside)
    • humidity: red for less than 30 % rH, green for 30 - 60 % rH and blue for more than 60 % to signal need of ventilation
    • volatile organic compounds, particles in the air, CO2 etc.
    • or any other important number like bank account balance, exchange rate, newest version number of a favourite (or personal) project etc. (These days I also tend to watch a count of people being ill.)

     

    Also, If the space between numbers is the same as space between the vertical lines of a single digit, the display can also be used as a horizontal bar graph.