Made a fiberoptic LED clock that now runs WLED

Projects
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Hey, so I made a clock a while ago. Released it on Prusaprinters so other people can download and make it. The code it ran on before was very basic and I needed help to get the actual clock function running. Coding doesn’t want to stick to my brain apparently…

After discovering WLED a couple days ago I wanted to see if the built-in clock function would work on my clock - And it does! It’s much more interesting now with all the animations it can have, and it’s so much easier to adjust the colors by just pressing buttons instead of uploading the code every time.

Here is the link to it. If the link dies, just search for 69188 on Prusaprinters.

Here it is running a WLED test. Looks much better in person though.

It’s running on a Wemos mini32 (esp32) right now - The one that looks like a D1, just a little larger (it can also run on a D1). Next circuit board will use an M5 STAMP PICO (esp32) - The smallest esp32 I have found (space is pretty tight in the core).

While I really like that it works, I would however want to see more settings added to the clock function, as it does not seem to have any control over colors and brightness (these new colors are confusing me when looking for the time :slight_smile: ).

In my original code there was also a light sensor (TEMT6000) and temperature sensor (Dallas 18B20) to adjust clock brightness to the light in the room. The temp sensor was something that could be used as a safety mechanism to shut off the lights if the clock gets too warm, which it can with certain light configs (it can use up to 20W in stress testing…) This was never coded in. These options probably doesn’t work with WLED, at least not by default.

Are there any plans to expand the clock function at some point? Would like to see settings for:

  • Adjusting colors and brightness of the hands (since we don’t see all colors at the same brightness).
  • Be able to turn off seconds.
  • Would be cool to see a seconds pointer that fades along instead of “ticking”. Maybe with a fading trail behind it.
  • Clock specific animations, but that’s probably asking to much - unless someone makes a WLED clock edition…

Edit: Replaced the video with a better one. No flicker on this one.

2 Likes
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Nicely done! It would be great to have some details on settings you have done with WLED. That way people who is not that tech savvy can repeat your project and enjoy such a beautiful mix of 2 projects.

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Thanks! Yes, I will probably make an update on Prusaprinters this weekend that will inform people that the code will be replaced with WLED going forward, and show how it’s setup. Old code will still be there though. I will also make a new video - Seems like my cheap 6 year old phone is more capable of making videos of things like this than my Canon M50…

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I would recommend you to post your project to GitHub. All printing and assembly details can remain on Prusa hub but programming details on Github. More people will see your awesome project :wink:

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Isn’t GitHub mostly for making and maintaining code? My Instructions would be pretty short, so I’m not sure if that would be necessary. I might make an account and fiddle around with it, to see how it works. I did watch an introduction video on YouTube a few months ago. Seemed pretty complicated, but that was for handling the code itself.

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GitHub is for version tracking so you can use for a lot of things. Your project will fit just fine. Plus people can add a suggestions and maybe some useful changes. Prusa hub is mostly for a showing ideas, Github is for tracking versions. In the end it’s your choice how and what to do :slight_smile: