Software user

Once again, Sure Electronics modified their 32x16 3mm LED display, and this time not only cosmetically. The two 16-pin shrouded male connectors have been replaced with 10-pin connectors. And the worst thing is that the display now requires 12V for power! Maybe these new displays are intended for use in vehicles powered by 12V batteries. Or maybe designers thought a 12V power source is easier to access than a 5V one. In any case, the display has an on-board DC-DC switching regulator (with XL4013 ) to make the required 5V. For someone who needs to replace the older model with the new one, the immediate consequences are: the connector between the driver board (e.g. Wise Clock 4 ) and the display won't work; connections must be re-wired, probably using an adapter cable; either supply 12V to the board through the connector, or hack the display by soldering the 5V wire directly to the board (see the photos); the holes won't align anymore. The good news is that the display is electric

New software for the Bubble clock from MikeM: I have the bubble LED shield working with the DS1337 RTC & LiPo shield.  I have it alternating the display with the battery voltage every 2 seconds right now.  I don't have a voltmeter handy, so I haven't verified what is displayed with actual voltage.  It started fully charged at 4.2v and has now dropped to 4.1v.  It should start blinking at 3.45v, and go to sleep at 3.3v. I started with your original bubble sketch from the blog posting, but then had to remap all the display pins from the schematic.  The current version of the SevenSeg library doesn't match your code, so I had to make some adjustments. I also changed the SevenSeg library code to even out the brightness.  It looped through all the segments and turned on each appropriate digit, then delayed and turned everything off. I changed it to loop through all the digits, turning on each appropriate segment.  Once all the appropriate segments are lit, it tu

I could have added a second bubble LED display to my "bubble clock" by connecting the anodes for the 4 new 7-segment digits to the only 4 pins left available: D0, D1, A6 and A7. Instead, I preferred to use the expensive ($8+) LED driver MAX7219 . Luckily, I got mine a long time ago as free sample from Maxim, and this was my chance to use it. As one can expect, the "double bubble" clock can display the seconds, plus the date and day of the week. Below are the 2 bubble clock versions side by side. Both are ProMini shields, so ProMinis get plugged on their backs. I designed them to stand by themselves with the electronics exposed and on the open, as shown in this post . I am not sure if this is a good idea, but designing (or finding) an enclosure seems even a bigger challenge. The sketch, included below, uses the LedControl library (communicates with MAX7219 through SPI). #include "LedControl.h" #include "Wire.h" #include "DS1307.h" #defi