Office Wall Multiclock - Indoor/Outdoor Temp, Date, Local and International Timezone

Office Wall clock with temperature, date time and additional international timezone.

Supplies

RaspberryPi Zero

USB WIFI (if not a PiZero W)

7 Segment Display (x4)

DHT22

14 Segment Display (x4)

7x14" Frame

Semi-Transparent PlexiGlass

Step 1: Prepare Raspberry Pi

Flashing RaspberriPi Hard Disk / Install Required Software (Using Ubuntu Linux)

Download "RASPBIAN" https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Create your new hard disk for DashboardPI

Insert the microSD to your computer via USB adapter and create the disk image using the dd command

Locate your inserted microSD card via the df -h command, unmount it and create the disk image with the disk copy dd command

$ df -h /dev/sdb1 7.4G 32K 7.4G 1% /media/XXX/1234-5678

$ umount /dev/sdb1

Caution: be sure the command is completely accurate, you can damage other disks with this command

if=location of RASPBIAN image fileof=location of your microSD card

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/raspbian-lite.img of=/dev/sdb (note: in this case, it's /dev/sdb, /dev/sdb1 was an existing factory partition on the microSD)

Setting up your RaspberriPi

Insert your new microSD card to the raspberrypi and power it on with a monitor connected to the HDMI port

user: pi pass: raspberry

Change your account password for security

sudo passwd pi

Enable RaspberriPi Advanced Options

sudo raspi-config

Choose: 1 Expand File System

9 Advanced Options

A2 Hostname change it to "OfficeMultiClock"

A4 SSH Enable SSH Server

A7 I2C Enable i2c interface

Enable the English/US Keyboard

sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard

Change the following line: XKBLAYOUT="us"

Reboot PI for Keyboard layout changes / file system resizing to take effect

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Auto-Connect to your WiFi

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Add the following lines to have your raspberrypi automatically connect to your home WiFi (if your wireless network is named "linksys" for example, in the following example)

network={
   ssid="linksys"
   psk="WIRELESS PASSWORD HERE"
}

Reboot PI to connect to WiFi network

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Now that your PI is finally on the local network, you can login remotely to it via SSH. But first you need to get the IP address it currently has.

$ ifconfig

Look for "inet addr: 192.168.XXX.XXX" in the following command's output for your PI's IP Address

Go to another machine and login to your raspberrypi via ssh

$ ssh pi@192.168.XXX.XXX

Start Installing required packages

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

$ sudo apt-get install vim git i2c-tools build-essential python-dev rpi.gpio python3 python3-pip python-setuptools python3-requests

Install DHT22 Python Library

$ git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Python_DHT.git

$ cd Adafruit_Python_DHT

$ sudo python2 setup.py install

Install ht16k33 Python Library

$ sudo pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-ht16k33

Update local timezone settings

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

select your timezone using the interface

Setup the simple directory l command [optional]

vi ~/.bashrc

add the following line:

alias l='ls -lh'

source ~/.bashrc

Fix VIM default syntax highlighting [optional]

sudo vi /etc/vim/vimrc

uncomment the following line:

syntax on

Clone the Repository to get the latest code changes:

https://github.com/khinds10/OfficeMultiClock

Step 2: Building the OfficeMultiClock

Solder Unique Display Jumpers

NOTE: All the I2C backpacks must be soldered on the back of each of the displays, the backpacks come with the display and must all be soldered on first.

For each of the I2C backpack displays you must solder the jumpers on the back in the all the possible combinations to have your RaspberriPI I2C interface to recognize each display with a unique address.

Leave the first display with no jumper soldered, the 2nd with the farthest right soldered, the 3rd with only the middle soldered and so on... Eventually you'll have to solder jumpers in all the combinations of 2 at a time connected and the final display with all 3 jumpers soldered to be connected.

There's a total of 3 pins so you should have a total combination of 8 unique combinations.

Step 3: Wiring the Components

Each of the 14 segment alpha numeric displays needs to have a connection to the RaspberryPI GND, 5V and 3V pins. The 7 segment display only needs connectivity to the GND and 5V pins.

I've used standard jumper wires to connect to all the pins on the display / RaspberryPI pins and grouped the common connections (all the GND wires, 5V wires) with a wirenut.

For each display in the dashboard ALL of the D and C pins need to be connected to the SCL and SDA pins on the PI.

Step 4: Assembly

I've created a square frame of wood, painted black, glued to the back of the frame.

Place the tinted PlexiGlass in the frame, this will allow the wall mounted board with displays to be able to fit behind the glass.

Using small pieces of wood or 3D printed squares (in grey), attach them to a black board (that will mount on the wall). This will serve as a guide to attach (with screws) the displays evenly to display on the wall.

Mount all the components wired (including the RPi) with screws attached to the painted black back board.

Mount on wall (the black frame with plexglass will hang over the top of it)