Edge clock

myminifactory

It all started at the supermarket... I was queuing at the cash register and I saw that they used a piece of plexiglass with edge LEDs that changed color to indicate if the cash register was open or closed. I liked the effect of the light around the edge of the plexiglass. I remembered having a piece of plexiglass lying around at home, so as soon as I got there, I wanted to apply that design to something. As I love electronics, robotics, 3D printing, and of course Arduino, I thought I could make some kind of Arduino-controlled clock. After some design, test work, and code, I came up with this edge clock. I know it might be a bit tricky to tell the time at first, but that's what makes it so much fun when family or friends come home and ask: What is that? When they do, it's easy to explain: It uses a common RGB LED strip with addressable LEDs (mine in groups of three). There are 12 different groups of LEDs. You can change the color to your liking. Each line of LEDs represents one portion of an hour, so there are 12 different lines, each one being five minutes long (except for the first one that's on the hour). The line in a different color tells you the hour. Imagine this: line 0, 1, 2, and 3 are all on in one color (white, for example), and line 5 is lit up in green. That means it's 5:15, five hours because of the green line and five minutes from each white line add up to fifteen minutes. If you're still unsure, check out this video! After that long introduction, do you want to print and build one? Assembling and materials - Apart from downloading and printing plastic parts, you'll need some electronics and the Arduino code. - Check this spreadsheet with links to buy materials. Be careful about connecting the correct power supply to your LED strip - a 12V power supply can burn out a 5V LED strip! - You'll need to do some soldering. Don't be afraid; it's not that difficult! If you're new to soldering, there are plenty of YouTube guides that can help. Comments on the code - IMPORTANT: Do not connect the power supply while uploading the sketch from Arduino IDE. You may damage your computer! Disconnect the power supply and LED strip positive cable, then connect USB to Arduino and upload the sketch. When it's done, you can disconnect USB from your computer and THEN (not before) connect the power supply. - You can change the hour and minute colors by modifying red, green, and blue colors in the code. If you don't know what RGB colors are, just ask Google! - My project uses an RTC clock module because using Arduino alone for a clock isn't a good idea due to the accuracy of the internal clock. When you first use it (or when you change the RTC module battery), you'll need to adjust the correct time. To do this, uncomment one line of the code, upload the sketch to Arduino, comment that same line again, and upload once more. You'll find the commented line in the code. - Another thing you may need to change are the pin numbers of the code to match your connections if you don't follow my exact diagram. - Also, take a look at the line to adjust the brightness of the LED strip (strip.setBrightness(240);) which you can adjust from 0 (off) to 255 (max). - Finally, bear in mind what kind of LED strip you have. My strip controls LEDs in groups of three. If you have a different one, you'll need to change the code. Download the code here: Edge clock code