A multi-function Raspberry Pi based clock display by your bedside!
The 64×64 LED Matrix is a great platform to display anything you care about. Like the time and what day it is. 🙂 With the motion and light sensor, the display can be made to dim or blank out so it will not disturb you while sleeping. A simple wave motion in the dark room is enough to re-enable the display for a short period.
The 3D printed harness file is available with this project, so you can adapt it to suit your bed or desk space needs. In the current form, two printed parts are glued together with regular table pin connectors.
The code is written in Python and has lots of potential for easy improvements. The current implementation gives you the ability to connect to an MQTT broker for subscribing and publishing events in a canonical IOT setup. But you need not to worry about that if a clock is all you care about. Underneath the Python code, this project uses the display driver written by Henner Zeller, which makes the display fast and stable when used together with the Adafruit parts.
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
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.
