Electronics-Lab.com Blog

Based on the idea from http://www.josepino.com/pic_projects/?timebase I have created a 1Hz Clock Generator. I use PIC12F675 as it’s available locally. Its price is just about US$1.
The concept is using 32.768kHz crystal as a clock for the PIC. Therefor, the internal instruction clock is 32768/4 = 8192 Hz. By using the 16 bit Timer1 to count the instruction clock cycles, the interrupt will occur every 8 second. This period can be reduced by setting initial value of the Timer1 (TMR1H:TMR1L).

1Hz Clock Generator using PIC12F675 - [Link]

Here is an interesting LED binary clock by instructables user ElevenOf9. I really like the single sided PCB, and the way the LEDs are arranged. It just looks cool! [via]

This is the second revision of my PIC based LED binary clock. The original version was the first PIC project I attempted, it used a PIC16F84A to do both the timekeeping and control the display matrix, unfortunately it didn’t keep good enough time and gained about a minute every week.

LED Binary Clock – [Link]

Tired of spending hours and hours in wire soldering? Do your circuits look ugly and you are looking for a way to produce professional-like PCBs? Then you had better try photoetching. And the first step to do that is to have the right equipment that is an Automated Exposure Box. Moreover if you like tinkering with microcontrollers, here is the challenge and it’s high time you launched the design of your own PCB Exposure Box.

Build your Own PCB Exposure Box with countdown timer - [Link]

There’s a dark stair well i traverse every night to get to my apartment. I modified a cheap tap-light to be [Tap-> stay on for 40 seconds, then shut off]. The mod takes all of 10 minutes to do, and is really useful if you don’t want to go back and shut it off.

Quick Modification to a Tap Light - [Link]

This clock is constucted using an old HDD. The clock is controlled using an ATMEGA128 microcontroller and the time is counted from DS1307 real time clock IC. Motor is controlled from TDA5140A using standard configuration. The device is also equipped with RS232 interface to load new software and a small universal remote.

HDDClock – Hard Drive Clock - [in polish] [Link] + [Youtube video]

This clock is based on ATTINY2313 and displays time in Roman numbers.  When you first turn it on, you have to adjust it using a small button.  Adjustment proccess is as follows:

1) Press and hold the button for about 3 seconds -> hours appear on the screen -> release the button.
2) Press the button again and hold -> the hours advance from “I” to “XXIV” -> release the button on the right time.
3) Wait about 3 seconds -> minutes appear on the screen.
4) Press the button and hold -> the minutes increase from “nothing” to “LIX” -> release on right minute.

Schematic and hex file are included

Caesar’s clock. LCD clock with roman digits - [Link]

A 12hr/24hr LED Clock with display control, uses a microcontroller PIC 16F84A or 16F628A and a few parts.

This LED clock may not be the easiest to build but surely it is the one with fewer parts that you can find, for that reason I call it “The ANP LED Clock”. (ANP stands for Almost No Parts.)

Here are the features on this ANP LED Clock:

• Can use common cathode or common anode 7-segment LED displays
• Displays time as 12 hours or 24 hours format.
• Allows to enable or disable the display for battery-operated circuits
• Can control the display brightness to reduce power consumption
• 7-segment LED displays are charlieplexed to reduce I/O ports usage
• PM LED indicator (optional)
• Only 10 parts needed: 1 PIC 16F84A,
• 22pF Capacitors, 2 n.o. switches, 1 4Mhz Xtal and 4 CA or CC 7segment LED displays
• Operates from 2.5 to 5.5 Volts, it can even work with a 3V coin battery

‘Almost No Parts’ 12/24hrs LED Clock - [Link]

A common challenge when working with embedded systems is keeping track of real time. Luckily, most microcontrollers have timers that can be used with a precision quartz crystal — already present for the CPU clock — to keep track of real time. In this video tutorial, we show how you can use the timer interrupts on an ATMega168 chip to make a simple timer. Building off of this, it is possible to make your own reasonably accurate alarm clock, create systems to perform timed automated tasks, or create a multitude of other projects.

Crystal Real Time Clock - [Link]

Is the evolution of the binary clock and allows planning time ON and time OFF for a relay. To keep consumption low a bistable relay was used, ’cause it needs power only when the status changes. Through the two buttons you can set time ON, time OFF and the current time. To drive the single coil bistable relay I used an RS485 driver, because it can provide 60mA output.

Daily Timer with binary display - [Link]

What do you do if you have a spare LCD module with backlight, a weird 16 button keyboard, and a PIC16F877A microcontroller gathering dust? A monster Martian Clock immediately springs to mind.

You are probably thinking “There are hundreds of PIC clocks on the Net – do we need yet another one?

This clock is quite different than all other PIC clocks I’ve seen in this that it has multiple timers that can work with different speeds (for example, you can have one showing your local time, another working on Mars day time, another showing the moon phase, etc.)

Mars Clock – PIC-microcontroller-based clock - [Link]