Thanks to Bruce for writing in to share his project. Read more here.
Many of us have a fascination with time and time-keeping. Search the internet for clock projects and you will find thousands of interesting articles! I’ve always wanted a clock for my ham radio shack, using seven-segment LEDs. I wanted a clock that would simultaneously display local time and coordinated universal time (UTC). One can buy or build two clocks and put them side by side, but what’s the fun in that? Here is an easy-to-build clock project that you can configure to your own needs. I’ll show you, step by step, how to put the hardware and software together.
Featured Adafruit Products!
Adafruit Feather 32u4 Basic Proto: At the Feather 32u4’s heart is at ATmega32u4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic, a chip setup we’ve had tons of experience with as it’s the same as the Flora. This chip has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM, with built in USB so not only does it have a USB-to-Serial program & debug capability built in with no need for an FTDI-like chip, it can also act like a mouse, keyboard, USB MIDI device, etc. This chip is well supported in the Arduino IDE and can run just about every sensor/library out there. Read more.
Adafruit 0.56″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack – Red: What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small display is to use an 8×8 matrix or a 4-digit 7-segment display. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control all the seven-segment LEDs you need 14 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in. We have them in two flavors – a mini 8×8 and a 4-digit 0.56″ 7-segment. They work perfectly with the matrices we stock in the Adafruit shop and make adding a bright little display trivial. Read more.