Father's Day "Pong Clock"
Intro: Father's Day "Pong Clock"
Many of you have already built, or plan to build the infamous "Pong Clock" seen here on Instructables by mrnick1234567.
I've made a few improvements, and spruced it up for dear old Dad.
After surveying a number of parents who might like the clock, there were 2 complaints that were most often repeated.
They either want 24 hour time or 12 hour time. On this they seem split, as there is a large military population here.
The non-military prefer a 12 hour clock, while military parents prefer the 24 hour clock.
This version of the pong clock lets you select which you want to use.
The other issue was that if they wanted it at a distance, the brightness was fine, but it was too bright for a nightstand etc.
This version of the pong clock has a brightness control.
Also, if you change from 12 to 24 hour time or change the brightness, it immediately returns you to whatever clock mode you were running before making the change.
The video doesn't show the brightness change well because the camera keeps compensating for it, but it's quite noticeable.
There is one small glitch in that when you set the time, it may display the wrong date immediately upon exiting the time setting routine. I may address this later if anyone finds it problematic. The time does set correctly, and after exiting the routine to a clock mode, it displays correctly thereafter.
If you aren't good at coding, I have included the hex file for easy upload to the clock.
I will also provide the source code.
Since a PDE file is plain text anyway, and this place won't let us upload a .PDE, I put .txt at the end. Just rename it if you want to open it directly, or copy and paste the text into the Arduino 0023. You can't use the new IDE to upload it - you must use an older version, and this was compiled in 0023. You can still get older versions online, so don't worry. I run both.
The .hex file you can just upload direct to the clock with AVRDude or some other similar program.
Happy Father's Day everybody!
Keep an eye out...later I will likely be adding capacitive touch and other cool things like Temperature etc. once I get that all figured out.
You can download the video here or watch HERE on YouTube.
I've made a few improvements, and spruced it up for dear old Dad.
After surveying a number of parents who might like the clock, there were 2 complaints that were most often repeated.
They either want 24 hour time or 12 hour time. On this they seem split, as there is a large military population here.
The non-military prefer a 12 hour clock, while military parents prefer the 24 hour clock.
This version of the pong clock lets you select which you want to use.
The other issue was that if they wanted it at a distance, the brightness was fine, but it was too bright for a nightstand etc.
This version of the pong clock has a brightness control.
Also, if you change from 12 to 24 hour time or change the brightness, it immediately returns you to whatever clock mode you were running before making the change.
The video doesn't show the brightness change well because the camera keeps compensating for it, but it's quite noticeable.
There is one small glitch in that when you set the time, it may display the wrong date immediately upon exiting the time setting routine. I may address this later if anyone finds it problematic. The time does set correctly, and after exiting the routine to a clock mode, it displays correctly thereafter.
If you aren't good at coding, I have included the hex file for easy upload to the clock.
I will also provide the source code.
Since a PDE file is plain text anyway, and this place won't let us upload a .PDE, I put .txt at the end. Just rename it if you want to open it directly, or copy and paste the text into the Arduino 0023. You can't use the new IDE to upload it - you must use an older version, and this was compiled in 0023. You can still get older versions online, so don't worry. I run both.
The .hex file you can just upload direct to the clock with AVRDude or some other similar program.
Happy Father's Day everybody!
Keep an eye out...later I will likely be adding capacitive touch and other cool things like Temperature etc. once I get that all figured out.
You can download the video here or watch HERE on YouTube.
10 Comments
mrnick1234567 10 years ago
If you don't mind me stripping the fathers day bits out, i'll re post it on my google code page as an update to the original code.
Cheers
Nick
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
I'm adding more to it later too.
The code is a bit sloppy and hard to follow at times, especially since I have only been at this a couple months, but I'm getting the hang of it! LOL!
A lot easier than trying to write it myself from scratch, that's for sure.
There are so many functions I still need to learn.
Right now I am having a bugger of a time trying to get the Arduino IDE to work with some code for an Atmega32 - but I'm working on it...
If you have any suggestions that I haven't already googled, I'd love to hear them!
mrnick1234567 10 years ago
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
Wish you had left that in! I thought it was brilliant!
mrnick1234567 10 years ago
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
I'm getting the hang of the Arduino IDE - but when I hit other projects that were just apparently coded in C alone without the Arduino IDE, I am lost. People say there are ways to do it through the Arduino IDE, and I have made some progress, but I am still lost. I do learn pretty fast though.
mrnick1234567 10 years ago
Thanks for the v4 code. I'll have a poke through it. About time the original clock had a firmware update!
SuperTech-IT 10 years ago
I especially like the intro...I think you will too!