Close
0%
0%

1 RGB LED Clock

A clock showing hours and minutes using only one RGB-LED to display the data

Similar projects worth following

The 1 RGBLED clock is a clock representing the time with only 1 RGB LED.

Advantages:

- few and cheap components: <5€

- small size, portable

=> easy to recreate

Disadvantages:

- hard to read the time

  • Hardware test build

    Paul Schmitz07/23/2017 at 16:08 0 comments

    For testing, I'm using an Arduino Nano clone as a microcontroller.

    As it is easier to see the individual colors, I used individual LEDs for red, green and blue. They are connected from three digital Pins on the Arduino (D5, D6 and D7) and a resistor network of 680 Ohms, which connects to ground (GND on the Arduino).

    The LEDs (from China) I use don't need very high current to light up, but they have different brightness at around same current. That could be fixable by using different resistor values, or using PWM.

    I also wrote a simple code to test if everything works. It lights up the LEDs one at a time. (I'm using the Arduino IDE):

    void setup(){
      pinMode(5,OUTPUT);
      pinMode(6,OUTPUT);
      pinMode(7,OUTPUT);
    }
    void loop(){
      digitalWrite(5,HIGH);
      digitalWrite(6,LOW);
      digitalWrite(7,LOW);
      delay(1000);
      digitalWrite(5,LOW);
      digitalWrite(6,HIGH);
      digitalWrite(7,LOW);
      delay(1000);
      digitalWrite(5,LOW);
      digitalWrite(6,LOW);
      digitalWrite(7,HIGH);
      delay(1000);
    }

  • First thoughts

    Paul Schmitz06/12/2017 at 12:51 0 comments

    There are two things to think about in this project: Hardware and Software.

    The hardware is simple in this case: One RGB-LED or three individual LEDs in three different colors are connected to resistors and a microcontroller (ATTiny?) on analog output.

    The important thing on software-side is representing the time on the LED in a format humans can read with easy explanations. Following are my first notices about this.

    - There are 12 different hours to display. Assign each one a color. As each LED can be controlled in brightness, it should be easy to find 12 distinguishable colors.
    - There are 60 minutes in a hour. Every LED can blink in 4 different patterns, which means 4*4*4=64 different blink combinations. One LED counts quarter hours, and the other two represent a number of minutes in that quarter.

View all 2 project logs

Enjoy this project?

Share

Discussions

Dr. Cockroach wrote 04/11/2018 at 07:10 point

Looks interesting and hoping to see a video to see if my tired older eyes can track the colors :-)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Does this project spark your interest?

Become a member to follow this project and never miss any updates