Introduction: The BlokClok Concept - Arduino Driven RGB Abstract Clock

By Michael McRoberts
About: Hi, my name is Mike and I am from London, England. I really like to make things and in particular like to do creative things with Arduinos and electronics. Other hobbies include astrophotography and sailing. C…

Arduino driven clock concept. Unique concept using an 8x8 RGB Dot Matrix Display. The time is indicated using blocks of colour. The central 6x6 grid is split into 4 x (3x3) grids and each 3x3 block is a different colour. The number of LED's per 3x3 grid indicate the digit. i.e. if the first 3x3 grid has 1 LED lit then the first digit is 1, the second has 7 then the 2nd digit is 7, etc. The top two grids are the hour digits and the bottom 2 the minutes. Around the edge the unused LED's have a moving light that shows the approximate position of the seconds.

The display is driven by 4 x 74HC595 Shift Registers controlled from the Arduino. Each register controls a colour (r, g & B) with the final register multiplexing the rows. The time is obtained from an DS1307 Real Time Clock chip with battery backup so that the device can be powered down and will resume at the correct time when powered back up again.