Software user

First off, a new adapter for the WiFiChron or HDSP clock . The 8-LED Neopixel stick from adafruit has the perfect dimensions to fit them. Naturally, the time is displayed in color code . The best definitions for the 10 colors I could come up with are these: byte color[10][3] = {   {0,0,0}      /*black*/,   {30,9,0}     /*brown*/,   {100,0,0}    /*red*/,   {128,60,0}   /*orange*/,   {110,120,0}  /*yellow*/,   {0,64,0}     /*green*/,   {0,0,111}    /*blue*/,   {64,0,63}    /*violet*/,   {15,15,15}   /*grey*/,   {127,127,127}/*white*/ }; The clock code is trivial, especially because it's using the great Neopixel library. Below is the most important function: void displayTime() {   byte digit1 = hour/10;   byte digit2 = hour%10;      strip.setPixelColor(0, strip.Color(color[digit1][0], color[digit1][1], color[digit1][2]));   strip....

The latest revision of WiFiChron has an XBee socket (beside the ESP8266 8-pin socket), which allows the addition of a few individual features: GPS-based time synchronization, by using the GPSBee ; displaying messages sent from a Bluetooth device, by using the BTBee / BLEBee ; displaying data acquired from an XBee / ZigBee network of sensors (not implemented yet); Things did not go smoothly, without some drama though. Naively (I always seem to forget that there is a difference between theory and practice), I designed the XBee/ESP to connect to the serial port, with the expectation that once the development (including testing with debug statements to the serial monitor) is done, I will just plug in the serial module (either XBee of ESP8266) and things will work properly. Well, I had to re-consider this approach once again. Luckily, I had two pins left available (D7 and D17), which I could use for software serial. I re-wired those to the XBee/ESP and used the hardware serial for console...

Another great software update from MikeM (download here )! This one has support for the ESP8266 module, allowing the WiFiChron clock to: join a specified wireless network in a user-friendly manner (with only the on-board, existing and minimal, hardware resources); synchronize the time from a specified NTP server (e.g. pool.ntp.org ); read and display RSS feed from a specified server (e.g. http://w1.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/KRDU.rss ); Before getting excited and jumping to compile and upload the new sketch, there are a few steps to be done on the ESP8266 module: 1. pull the CHPD pin high with a 10k resistor to Vcc; 2. make sure you can communicate with the module using a serial port; this could also include checking the version of the installed firmware (AT+GMR); 3. upgrade the firmware on ESP8266 to version 0.9.6 . After you download the bin files, the next step is to find a tool that would upload those bin files onto the chip. There are many tutorials on how to do this, some ...

Update Sep 18, 2017:   Here is the latest revision of the PCB included in the kit. Update Oct 8, 2015 : The latest revision of the PCB (pictured here and here ) has hardware support for XBee (which also covers GPSBee, WiFiBee and BTBee). With this kit you build a clock like the ones shown in the photos below. Last one, courtesy of Nick, features an yellow/amber display. There are two buying options: 1. use or make your own enclosure  (US$47, free shipping to North America) 2. enclosure included ( Serpac A20 , transparent front panel, screws, back panel hand-drilled with 3 holes for buttons and rectangular opening for the USB connector )  (US$61, free shipping to North America) The kit includes the following electronic parts: main PCB display adapter PCB ATmega328 with 8MHz bootloader, programmed with a clock sketch + 28-pin socket 74HC595 shift register + 16-pin socket HDSP-2534 8-character alphanumeric display + 4 x 6-pin machined headers DS3231 + ...

Making a proper enclosure for the HDSP clock is challenging, since it was designed specifically to stand on a phone charging dock. Inspired by DaveC's lay-flat version  (he didn't send photos of the inside though), I put some thinking into how to easily convert the "stand up", vertical clock, to an "encasable" horizontal one. The main requirement is to place the display perpendicular to the board. This could be done using a right-angle header of some sort, as shown in the photo below. With this easiest solution, as you see in the next photo, the board must be upside down for the display to show properly. With a bit of more work, basically re-wiring the connections to the display on the adapter PCB (that holds the display), the whole device looks more appropriate, as shown in the next photo. Which brings me to the subject of "display adapters". Although the HDSP clock was designed specifically for HDSP-2534 , it can be easily converted to use simi...

MikeM ported this " proverb clock " to HDSP clock . I did not have a chance to try the code myself yet (I am out of displays at the moment), but he vouches for it: The proverb code is in place and working well.  I created a simple menu,  accessed by pressing the hour and the minute buttons at the same time.  I  have a 12 hour/24 hour selector, brightness selector, and Proverbs on/off  selector. Grahame Marsh's original proverb list was all in upper-case because his VFD  displays only handled upper-case.  I've regenerated the compressed proverb  list after changing it to only capitalize the first letter.  To do more than  that I'd have to proof-read each of the 770 proverbs and find all the proper  nouns to capitalize.  Capitalizing the first letter as a compromise doesn't  look bad.  It helps the eye find the start of the word while the proverb is  scrolling. Mike also 3D-printed this stand, re-scaling to ...

The centerpiece of this clock kit is the vintage-style 8-character display HDSP-2534 originally from HP, currently manufactured by Avago. The assembled clock looks like in the photo below. The dock, not included in the kit, is a miniB USB phone charger; it can be easily sourced from ebay , if you don't already have one. (You can even get a fancy one, e.g. custom-made exotic wood, on etsy.com .) The kit includes the following components: PCB; ATmega328P, with bootloader and fuses for 8MHz internal clock, and the sketch preloaded (also downloadable from here ); HDSP-2534 display ; 595 shift register; DS1307 real time clock; 32kHz crystal CR1220 battery; battery holder; push buttons (x2); capacitor 100nF (x3); 10k resistor (x3); 28-pin socket; 16-pin socket; 8-pin socket; 6-pin machined female header (x4).    $40, free shipping to North America Note: The kit is currently out of stock. Please send me an email (my address is in the top right corner of the page) if you want one. I ...

I recently had the opportunity to acquire a few HDSP-2534  smart alphanumeric displays on the cheap. They seem to be vintage electronics (mines are stamped 9802, by HP), but they are still being made by Avago and sold by digikey (for about $40 a piece). From the datasheet, the HDSP-253x looks like the LED dot-matrix equivalent of an HD44780-controlled LCD display: data is sent on a 8-bit bus; ability to decode 128 ASCII characters, which are permanently stored in ROM; allows definition of 16 user-programmable symbols that are stored in the on-board RAM. I wired the display to an ATmega328 (internal oscillator at 8MHz) through a 595 shift register, using the schematic in this post from nycresistor blog. They use the HDSP-2111 display, which is very similar to the HDSP-2534 I have. They also provide demo source code for writing data to the display. Needless to say everything works as described. My contribution to the code is a function that sets the display brightness at one of th...