Your search for a big (bedside) clock has come to an end: in line with and respect to Garett Bartley and its under Hackster published 5 minutes IoT clock project (I have a little longer, since my soldering iron was not yet on heat) I begin with the individual parts which are provided by Adafruit and which options I have found via Blynk to tweak.
Step by step InstructionsBut slowly: step by step
1) You can order the items at Adafruit (or a dealer of your trust) or directly the necessary backpack. For the around 20 euros this will be delivered as follows:
2) Solder the 5 headers on the PCB board top and make sure that the PINs stand out long enough so they can be connected either directly to jumper cables or via a board to the photon.
On the left and right you will find 8 additional headers.
3) Run the cabling as intended (SDA = D0 = D, SCL = D1 = C).
4) Flash the code.
5) Prepare your Smartphone Blynk-App:
Bind the 3 Slider-Widgets like the following:
- Timezone: V2 (-1 to 14)
- Brightness: V0 (0 to 15)
- Blinkrate: V1 (0 to 3)
If the result is as follows:
Garett has given a lot of effort in the creation of appropriately smartly designed housings. You can view his sketch-up design after you have installed the free SketchUp Make sketchup application.
With the 3 Blynk options, you can use your alarm clock to quickly simulate several time zones: do you have friends, family or business partners abroad? Using a simple slider, you can determine which time is currently in the respective country.
The digits and the incredible brightness is great? But at night, do you prefer a slightly darkened display brightness? No problem: move from 0 (slightly bright) to a maximum of 15 (full brightness).
Do you like the flashing display better than a permanent display of the time? Please very: via the third slider you can adjust the flashing intervals.
ImprovementsImprovement options, I've recognized the following:
- to conveniently provide an alarm time of one or more alarms via the Blynk app
- switch on the LED display only for a few seconds via a PIR motion sensor, otherwise it will be permanently switched off.
> you can give matrix.begin(0x70); a try
- to choose a representation at night, which also outputs the representation of a leading 0 during hour 0 (0:03 instead of x:x3).
> you can give the following a try:
if (Time.hour() == 0) {
matrix.writeDigitNum(1, 0); // = first value = number of digit - in this case = second digit, starts with 0 to 4; second value = value to display
}
if (Time.minute() <= 9) {
matrix.writeDigitNum(3, 0); // = first value = number of digit - in this case = third digit, starts with 0 to 4; second value = value to display
}
If you would like to contribute with your ideas or suggestions for solutions, I encourage you to do so.
Until then I wish you a lot of fun with your first own watch - which Adafruit also in other colors like yellow, red, white and blue in the assortment leads. This project costs about € 50.
Update 18.01.2018I cut out the required rectangle for the display from a solid cardboard packaging and directly connected the photon with jumpers. If a nice place for it is found, I can still color the housing accordingly.
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