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A 3D printed Micro Word Clock based on a 8x8 LED matrix. Time is shown as words or and as scrolling text.

Around 6 months ago I built a Tiny Word Clock using a 60mm x 60mm LED matrix. It was based on a word clock by gfwilliams. He used a 30x30mm LED matrix with a printed label to define the letters. I was skeptical at the time whether an ink printed label was going to be dark enough to prevent light bleeding into adjacent letters. Hence the reason to 3D print the letters and subsequently this meant using the larger LED matrix.

Recently I saw that Mirko Pavleski had built a similar clock with a ink printed label. His video showed very little light bleeding into adjacent letters. So I decided to give the ink printed label concept a go.

The schematic, board layout, case design and software is heavily leveraged off my Cube Clock.

Setting the time
Word based matrix style clocks are generally only accurate to 5 minutes owing to the lack of words they can show. The time held in the clock still needs to be accurate to at least one minute.

By pressing the SET button, the letter A flashes in the top left corner of the display to denote that the hours are being set. The hour value is shown as two 7-segment digits. The UP and DOWN button will change the hour value from 0 to 23.

When the SET button is pressed again, the letter D flashes in the top right corner of the display to denote that the minutes are being set. The minute value is shown as two 7-segment digits. The UP and DOWN button will change the minute value from 0 to 59. Holding the UP or DOWN button down will increment or decrement the value automatically.

Pressing the SET button again will set the time and return the display to the Word Clock face.

While the Word Clock face is being displayed, pressing the DOWN button will scroll the current time as text. The time shown has a resolution of 1 minute.”

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