In the end, I managed to stuff the arduino and LED's inside an IKEA shadow box, and used printed transparencies to create the black letter mask.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: The materials
1 Ikea RIBBA shadow box - $10
98 white LEDs - $7-10 (buy in bulk on ebay)
98 1KOhm resistors - $3
1 Arduino (or an ATMega168/ATMega328 and extra hardware - 5V regulator, crystal, etc) - $7 (for standalone chip and extra hardware) or $30 for arduino USB board
3 ULN2003A Driver ICs - $1.89 at Digikey
3 HCF4094 shift registers - $1.44 at Digikey
1 Barrel-plug connector - $0.38 at Digikey
2 Buttons - scavenged from old electronics
1 6V or 7V DC wall wart - scavenged from old electronics, or ~$4 online
1 sheet colored paper (used for a hint of color around the border)
1 9" square piece of cardboard (used to hold LEDs in place)
1 cereal box (cut up to make light baffles - see step 3)
1 black garbage bag
2 printed transparencies (see attached pdf on step 2) - $1
1 protoboard for microcontroller, driver ICs, etc. - $5
Total cost: around $44 (using standalone ATMega168) or $67 (if you buy a full Arduino)
optionally a breadboard is useful for prototyping the circuit









































Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »




and two, can you make a list with links to all the materials? thank you.
When I click on it, it downloads a .tmp file.
I am also wondering one other thing, I don't have an IKEA here, and can't buy the exact frame listed (It's not offered online). So should any 9X9 Shadow box frame work? What are the most important dimensions I need to try and match up? Depth?
http://www.highonsolder.com/blog/2011/1/8/arduino-word-clock.html
The pins you should wire to on your Arduino UNO are shown below:
Strobe - Digital 8
Data - Digital 7
Clear - Digital 6
PWM - Digital 9
Minute Pushbutton - Digital 2
Hours Pushbutton - Digital 3
quoting Joe from "http://www.highonsolder.com"
that worked for mine : )
A full pic gallery can be seen here.
http://gallery.me.com/thesniper#100122
Its been a long 6 months!
-TheSniper-
I've decided to copy this project but I'm new to arduino and electronics in general. I started gathering all the materials needed for this and before making any purchases I would like to know if it's possible to get a full schematics for this! Your drawing seems to be missing some parts - Is it possible to get the whole schematics ? Thank you in advance!
cvaast got an answer yet?
Great tutorial and because of your tutorial I am just finishing up a clock which is my first electronics project. Everything is working correctly except my photo resister dimmer. I adjusted the Arduino code and the lights will dim when it gets dark but after about 7-10seconds the whole clock goes dark. Turn room lights back on and the clock lights up again. Any tips or ideas on what I need to do? I tried a couple different photo resisters but same results.
Thank you
lightLevel = analogRead(**your analog pin IN here**);
mappedlevel = map(lightLevel,0,1000,0,255);
if(mappedlevel<40) mappedlevel =40 ;
analogWrite(**your analog OUT pin here** , mappedlevel);
Thanks again.
So anyways, Is 12V too much to come down from?
I find it hard to prevent the light from bleeding between lit words and unlit words. I think my light baffles are not evenly cut enough. Does someone have a tip about that ?
Also Scottbez, i wonder if you kept the original glass screen of the ikea frame or removed it. I have kept it, and it is not bad
I have kept the glass
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-Arduino-WordClock/
Can you post pls any photo of the back clock to see how you are mounted the board and settled the wire?
Thanks
Thanks.
Driver IC: ULN2003APG
Shift Register: HCF4094BE
Search these on DigiKey and you should get what you need
The only thing that I'm wary about now is the wiring itself. It would be nice if the schematic had all of the registers and ICs so I had more detail on where to solder. Thankfully, I have a friend that went to school for electrical engineering, so I may (will) have to get some help from him.