“A timepiece that allows to stop and think about the essence of time, and also a fun project to build!
Binary Clock Prototype
Building a binary clockBackgroundA couple of years ago I wanted to try out some iot-related stuff. I bought a couple of Arduino-boards and some random components and started fiddling around. At first I started out by trying some experiments such as temperature controlled LED lights and blinking stuff that reacted to sound. After this I wanted to get my feet wet and actually build something, preferably geeky, not necessarily very useful. Binary clocks have been an interest of mine for years. They kind of force you to take a step back and reflect on time, what time is, what is time and so on, and maybe slow down the frantic pace of modern life for a few seconds. Or not, but I like them anyway!
The digital hardware
Initially I used an Arduino UNO board and some prototyping boards. This combined with a clock chip (DS3231) gave an accurate digital clock, even if it was not very pretty. After a few prototyping rounds I settled on Arduino/Genuino Nano and its ilk, I found some cheap versions with the CH340H chipset that worked well with Arduino Studio.A bunch of 5mm LED lights in various colors and brightness values, some resistors and a lot of wiring and I actually had produced something that did something. The low power diffused LEDs were really nice, although the blue is a bit sharp. The green 15000mcd ones are horrible they can only be viewed from a narrow angle, and they tend to blind people despite toning them down with resistors.”