NaviGadget

2 by 12 GPS wall clock

Mar 20, 2006 gps navigation, hacks

It’s the project that just kept getting larger. We combine some LED light bars with a simple controller and a GPS receiver.

About 6 months ago, we discussed creating a 6′ tall alarm clock – authentic down to the Timex face plate. While this may sound like a silly idea to begin with, it quickly became obvious just how difficult it would be to build at that scale so the project was scuttled. Recently, I came across a source for pre-package LED light bars that rejuvenated my need for a big clock. Why not?

I now hate Styrofoam. If you want to replicate any part of this project, prepare to have little white balls all over your work area.

So here is the little project that grew to 12 feet. We added a GPS receiver so now we have a 12′ clock that sets itself, displays hours/minutes/seconds, and is accurate to 100ns. Beat that bed side alarm!…

…There are a couple things that this clock does well. The control system is beautifully scalable. Powering the system over Cat5 cables makes the wiring super easy. The digits are pretty labor intensive to produce, but their design makes them easy to add/subtract from a system. Andrea had a really good idea of connecting the controller to incoming orders – we could display the sales dollar amount for the day. What about creating a clock that counted the number of seconds to St. Patrick’s day? Sporting events? Number of hits to a website? Time until the next bus arrived? Time until ‘beer-time’ Friday? Days it will take to pay-off my college loans? The applications are pretty plentiful.

Digits are not even the limiter! We could even hook up some big freaking LED arrays. Imagine the colon dot – but in a 8 x 8 array. Ohhh – what about a massive Connect-Four game board… read the rest at spark fun electronics