NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – From Evil Mad Scientist Labs!

1-2

NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – From Evil Mad Scientist Labs! Evil Mad Scientist Labs never disappoints with their fantastic kits and clocks. The Alpha Clock Five is no exception: An awesome alarm clock soldering kit– featuring five crazy-bright, crazy huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays in red, a Chronodot RTC (for precise quartz timing, complete with battery backup) and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.

8-1

These big 18-segment alphanumeric LED displays are notoriously difficult to drive– there are 54 LED elements inside each LED character and the different segments take different amounts of current. We’ve now made it easy to drive five at a time, and wrapped it all up in neat package with classic alarm-clock styling.

2

Standard Features of Alpha Clock Five:

  • Extremely wide display brightness range. All the way from very dim (for dark bedrooms) all the way up to annoyingly bright
  • Huge 2.3″ (5.8 cm) tall digits are easy to see, even if you normally wear glasses
  • Alarm on-off indicator
  • Four standard alarm tones
  • Snooze function
  • 12-hour (AM/PM) and 24-hour clock modes
  • Rear-panel white LED nightlight; can be turned on or off from the options menu
  • Sturdy acrylic case features subtle, laser-engraved button labels
  • Transparent rear panel lets you show off your handiwork
  • Comes complete with plug-in power supply and backup battery
  • Microcontroller comes pre-programmmed; no programming is required

5

Hacker-friendly Design:

  • Open source hardware design– easy to hack!
  • Open source software design– easy to reprogram (if you want to)!
  • Upgradeable firmware
  • Based on the ATmega644A microcontroller with 64 kB of flash, with plenty of room to grow.
  • Comes pre-flashed with Sanguino bootloader; can be programmed through Arduino IDE (with extensions).
  • 6-pin TTL-serial connector, can be used to display data or time sent from computer
  • Unused I/O pins are broken out from the microcontroller, including one ADC and 5+ GPIO
  • Open-frame case design gives easy access to serial connector and reset button

Alpha Clock Five kit configurations:
The full (non-basic) Alpha Clock Five kit– available on this page –comes complete with the beautifully made Alpha Clock circuit board, the five alphanumeric LED displays (ultrabright red, 2.3″ character height, with upper and lower decimal points), machine pin sockets for those displays, pre-programmed ATmega644A microcontroller with Sanguino bootloader, 5 tactile button switches, 20 ppm quartz crystal, universal-input plug-in power supply, stainless mounting hardware, alarm buzzer, all of the the LED driver chips, transistors, resistors, capacitors and other little parts needed to build the kit, plus a Chronodot real-time-clock module and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.

The Alpha Clock circuit board is 9.430 X 2.736″ in overall size, and extra stiff at 0.094″ thick. It has a black soldermask and gold plated finish. Once assembled with its case, Alpha Clock Five is approximately 9.44″ wide, 3.78″ tall, and 2.80″ deep.

ChronoDot
Alpha Clock Five comes complete with a Chronodot real-time clock module. It provides your clock kit with (1) a higher accuracy quartz crystal oscillator, (2) a backup battery, and (3) extra geek cred for having a TCXO-based RTC. The included battery is estimated to last for 7 years.

USB-TTL Cable
You may be interested to add an optional FTDI USB-TTL converter cable, which provides an optional interface between your computer and your clock. It can be used (1) to sync the clock’s time to the time on your PC, (2) to reprogram the clock through (a modified version of) the Arduino IDE, or (3) to send serial data to display on the five-character LED display. Note, however, that these are entirely optional operations– no programming is needed to build or use an Alpha Clock Five clock kit!

Power supply
The Alpha Clock Five kit includes a universal-input power supply that will work with worldwide voltages. The plug is a power-strip-friendly US type, so you may need an inexpensive “grocery store” plug adapter to fit the wall socket in your country.

If you need to provide power from an alternate source, Alpha Clock Five requires (and provides hookup locations for) a regulated 5 V dc power supply with 1 A capacity

In stock and shipping now!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.