RetroPie NES Clock Tells You When it’s Game Time

We’ve all seen the 3D printed replicas of classic game consoles which house a Raspberry Pi; in fact, there’s a pretty good chance some of the people reading this post have one of their own. They’re a great way to add some classic gaming emulation to your entertainment center, especially …read more

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RGB Word Clock Doesn’t Skimp on the Features

Like most pieces of technology, word clocks seem to be getting better and better every year. As hackers get their hands on better microcontrollers and more capable LED controllers, these builds not only look more polished, but get improved features and functions. Luckily for us, the rise of these advanced …read more

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Is That A Word Clock In Your Pocket?

Word clocks are one of those projects that everyone seems to love. Even if you aren’t into the tech behind how they work, they have a certain appealing aesthetic. Plus you can read the time without worrying about those pesky numbers, to say nothing of those weird little hands that spin around in a circle. This is the 21st century, who has time for that?

Now, thanks to [Gordon Williams], these decidedly modern timepieces just got a lot more accessible. His word clock is not only small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but it’s the easiest-to-build …read more

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Morphing Digital Clock Will Show You A Good Time

A few weeks ago, [HariFun] set out to emulate a 7-segment display with an LED matrix. Seems easy enough, right? Right. He also wanted to come up with a new way to transition between digits, which is a much harder task. But he did it, and it’s really cool. At a viewer’s suggestion, [Hari] used the transition as the basis for a mesmerizing clock that brings the smooth sweep of an analog second-hand into the digital age.

This is the coolest way to watch the time pass since the hourglass. You can almost hear the light move as one digit …read more

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Fast LED Matrix Graphics For The ESP32

Many of you will have experimented with driving displays from your microcontroller projects, and for most people that will mean pretty simple status information for which you’d use standard libraries and not care much about their performance. If however any of you have had the need for quickly-updating graphics such as video or game content, you may have found that simpler software solutions aren’t fast enough. If you are an ESP32 user then, [Louis Beaudoin] may have some good news for you, because he has ported the SmartMatrix library to that platform. We’ve seen his demo in action, and the …read more

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Automating The Design Of Word Clocks

Word clocks, or a matrix of light-up letters that spell out the time, are a standard build for all enterprising electronics enthusiasts. The trouble is finding the right way to drive a matrix of LEDs and the significant amount of brainpower that goes into creating a matrix of letters that will spell out the time without making it look like it’s supposed to spell out the time.

For his Hackaday Prize entry this year, [Stephen Legge] is creating a standard toolkit that makes word clocks easier to build. It’s a hardware and software project, allowing for LED matrices of any …read more

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4-Stroke Clock Fires On All Cylinders

We love a good clock build around here, especially if it tells time in a unique way. This 4-stroke digital clock designed by [lagsilva] takes the checkered flag in that category. As it displays the time, it also demonstrates the operation of an internal combustion engine. The numbers take the form of pistons and dance an endless repetition of intake, compression, combustion, exhaust.

The clock’s digits are made from two LED matrices driven by an Arduino Uno and a couple of MAX7219 driver boards. The dots that form the digits move up and down the matrices in 1-3-4-2 firing order. …read more

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Count YouTube Subscribers with this Red Play Button Award

Professional YouTubers live and die by the number of subscribers they have. It seems like a brutal way to make a living to us, but to each his own. Still, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right, and keeping track of how you’re doing with this Play Button Award subscriber counter might make sense. Or it might drive you nuts.

YouTuber [ibuynewstuff] has reached the vaunted 100,000 subscriber mark, the number required to earn the Silver Play Button award. Sadly, 100k is the bare minimum needed to get YouTube’s attention, and tales of waiting …read more

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Multifunction Raspberry Pi Chiptune Player

General Instrument’s AY-3-8910 is a chip associated with video game music and is became popular with arcade games and pinball machines. The chip tunes produced by this IC are iconic and are reminiscent of a great era for electronics. [Deater] has done an amazing job at creating a harmony between the old and new with his Raspberry Pi AY-3-8910 project.

[Deater] already showed us an earlier version of the project on a breadboard however after having made some PCBs and an enclosure the result is even more impressive. The system consists of not one but two AY-3-8910 for stereo sound …read more

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