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Author: lorrainbow
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7 segment display clock

lorrainbow

Hello!

 

This is my first blog post. I post a lot to twitter but thought it would be good to keep track of everything for my element14 presents videos here.

 

For my next video I'm making a 7 segment RGB LED clock. I've 3d printed the bases on my robox printer in different colours: they look amazing!

I was going to 3d print the lids but I printed one to test it out with a light and it didn't diffuse as well as I wanted. Plus my brain was going crazy with the noise of the 3d printer! It took 90 minutes to print each segment.

 

So I've laser cut some translucent acrylic for the lids instead. I had to adapt the display and print a small cage to hold the lid in place. It works well!

Next up: solder the remaining numbers and choose a microcontroller.

 

This one is connected to a micro:bit and I found a real time clock board for it that would work... but I could use any microcontroller really. Besides a clock I haven't decided what else to use it for - an international clock, a calendar notifier? The LED strip is RGB and individually controllable.

Anonymous

  • Lorraine,

     

    I do like the concept of 3D printing the large displays. I'll have to keep the concept in mind some hom for future projects. Maybe not as big though.

     

    Dubbie

  • Wow, 42 hours of 3D printing. So you've spent a week just printing segments? I'm curious if you'll leave a gap between the segments to make it look even more 7-segment-y?

     

    As for what the clock should show, I'm very partial to the real atomic time. Now you might think it's odd since it's 37 seconds ahead of UTC, but those 37 seconds is the accumulated slow down of the earth's rotation since 1958. Which I will admit is both terrifying and amazing at the same time.

     

    Having it display the week number and day of month would be super handy too. Although I'm not sure how popular week numbers are elsewhere around the world. This year is unusual too in that there's a week 53, time is a very messy thing.

     

    P.S. I love that giant Raspberry Pi pinout guide, although it made me realize I'm the only one who thinks that the Ethernet jack should face up.

  • Loving the big numbers and bright colors!  Looking forward to the finished project.