Maniacal Labs
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MSP430 Nixie Clock By Rob
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ThinkGeek Wooden Clock Build
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Binary Epoch Christmas Tree
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Random Photos
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Neon Lamp Logic Nixie Clock
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Sunrise Alarm Clock - Prototype
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Meter Clock: Keeping "Current" Time
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One Week Left on the PrismaChron Fundraiser!
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Building the PrismaChron: Diffusers
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Announcing the PrismaChron!
MSP430NixeTubeClock-11 I saw this kit come up in Tindie’s twitter feed, and instantly knew that I wanted one. It’s relatively inexpensive, not very complex, and it looks amazing (especially with the acrylic front and back plates).
Read more…What’s this?! Wood?! There’s not even any lights!! True, but it was a fun build, and I might put some kind of light-up something or other on/near it, but I really like how it looks by itself. Anything added would only be to accent it. For now, here it is; working. Most of the time. The above video is the result of a few days work putting together this awesome wooden clock kit from ThinkGeek.
Read more…So I have 15 meters of LPD8806 programmable LED lights on my fake Christmas tree. But I feel I can up the Nerd quotient even more. Inspired by the Binary Epoch Clock kit, I added an animation to the tree that turns it into a giant unreadable binary clock. The lights are controlled by a RasPi running the BiblioPixel library, with the AllPixel making the hardware interfacing a snap. Unix epoch time (number of seconds since 12:00am Jan 1 1970) is represented in binary notation.
Read more…I had a 24-led NeoPixel ring lying around being useless, so I decided to make it do something less useless. As is typical, it became a clock. Not an original idea, sure. But these rings are well-suited for clockification. The blue ‘seconds’ lights will fade around the ring once per minute. There’s some mapping logic to determine where the green ‘minutes’ light should go. Hours is straightforward enough if the clock is showing 24hr time.
Read more…Now this is just plain cool. And insane. Every once in a while I see a project that really makes me question how much I know about electronics design and this is certainly one of them. Instead of a microprocessor, or even plain-old discrete transistors, all of the logic of this clock is accomplished with nothing more than neon lamps. Whaaaat? I won’t even try to explain, but let the designer explain over on his site.
Read more…While I rarely sleep past 6am, or sleep at all for that matter, my wife does require an alarm clock from time to time. After a recent few days of her alarm going off right in the middle of a R.E.M. sleep cycle she mentioned a desire for a more gentle alarm. I’ve seen those sunrise alarm clock lights many times before, but they but they are a bit pricey and she didn’t want a light that would be right next to the bed.
Read more…MeterClock_LitUp I’ve seen a few meter clocks in my travels of the web, and I love the idea. A few days ago, I decided that I must have one of my own. Such began the “How to do it” pondering cycle.
Read more…First of all, many, many thanks to those who have supported the PrismaChron already! It’s been an interesting first week and we’re part of the way there, but we still have a ways to go. Unfortunately, if we don’t hit the minimum number of pre-orders, we won’t be able to make the kits cost effective. So we are asking for a little more of your help. If you can, please share the following link on the social media of your choosing: https://www.
Read more…The PrismaChron (not its first name, more on that in another post) has been in the works for quite a long time. Longer even than the Binary Epoch Clock. We’ve spent that time truly fine-tuning every little aspect of it in an effort to make it a fantastic little kit that we can be proud of. Being a clock that displays its time as color, getting it just right was very important to us and that meant getting the LED diffusion perfect.
Read more…We are very happy to announce our latest kit, the PrismaChron! The PrismaChron Clock is our take on time as color. The display consists of three RGB LEDs, one each for seconds, minutes and hours. As each value progresses through time, its LED slowly fades through the spectrum from red to violet, and everywhere in between. Just like the Binary Epoch Clock, the PrismaChron is fully Arduino compatible, open source, and ready to be hacked.
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