Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Stuff

A customer recently requested a two-faced Wise Clock, basically two displays back-to-back connected to the same Wise Clock board, and showing the same thing (in the same time) on both sides. This would be another "Kandinsky" clock (see this post for pictures of the original; name coined by Wyolum, I believe).

To include this feature in the current software was not trivial. The main idea was to define a new macro (WANT_TWO_FACE) and play with it around existing calls to HT1632 functions. This was the idea. The actual implementation is quite messy and spreads over 18 or so (mostly the "app") files. In any case, I only beta-tested it with 2 displays and works in all modes except "Big" (I didn't bother to investigate yet).

Here are a few photos.



(The second display has a defect, hence the crooked last 0.)

Next round of testing should cover the 4-display 2-faced clock, that is, 2 displays on each side, like a double dual Wise Clock (I know, it's confusing. I will probably ask permission to rename it "Single Kandinsky Wise Clock" and "Double Kandinsky Wise Clock" since I am running out of attributes. Just kidding.)

On a different front, my friend Nick built a 4-display Wise Clock 4 and sent me this photo (plus a set of laser-cut plates to build one myself too; thanks again Nick). Apparently, the software for the 4-display clock has some bugs, so expect soon a new code release (which will include the "two-faced" feature as well).



And lastly, I found this board on ebay. No, I did not buy it (and I am not going to). Just look carefully at the photo and think how you would actually use it, with a knob inserted on the pot's shaft.



3 comments:

  1. Bit off a design flaw that one...but those pots are pretty good without the knob, the grip is pretty good (I use them on a few nixie tube clocks to adjust HV), and you can get right angled USB sockets that might get you out of trouble...;-) Looking forward to the double clock update....will it be possible to set them to tell different times (or even different APPS? ;-)

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    1. I thought that once you put a knob on, that USB is not accessible anymore. Of course you can leave the pot without a knob, but when enclosed, it would look like a broken piece of equipment.

      Running different apps: we would need a set of buttons for each app (I don't even want to think of the software, a nightmare). It would probably be much easier to have 2 separate clocks :)
      "Different times" feature is already included under UTC menu.

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  2. Nice job Florin. The doubling turned out to be very easy with the WS2811 LEDs. I just shot the same data stream twice down each line: voila. The image doubled around the back.

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