Have you ever wanted to tell time with glowing words seemingly suspended in mid-air? With this Elmwood exclusive project kit, you can!
Based on this tutorial from Adafruit, this kit contains all the bits you need to make your own vertical word clock. We've even taken it to the next level by including a laser-cut wooden stand!
The effect is pretty cool in person, and the time is clearly lit even in a fairly bright environment. But where it shines (literally) is in the dim light, where the time is spelled out in eerie, hovering words. You might want to stay up late just to see "MIDNIGHT" floating in the air...
This kit includes:
Hardware / tasks required to complete this project:
- You will need to solder header pins to the RTC Featherwing, stacking header pins to the Feather M0, and the slide switch to the M0 (all parts included).
- You will also need some spare wire to make a few connections as shown in the Adafruit tutorial.
- You will need a microUSB to USB cable to program the Feather M0. We do not include these because we figure you already have one.
- You will need some wood glue to assemble the base and the channel for the LED strip. None of the text on the wood pieces should be visible once you have assembled the pieces. We only engrave the text as an assembly aid.
- You will need side cutters or strong scissors to cut the LED strip to length. You'll want to cut to a length of 20 LED's.
Programming required to complete this project:
- Upgrade the version of Circuit Python on your Feather M0 board. We recommend version 4.0.2. To install, put the board into bootloader mode by tapping the RESET button twice while connected via USB. When the LED on the board flashes red and stays green, it should be ready. Look for a USB device named FEATHERBOOT. Drag the UF2 bootloader file onto the board. The lights should flash and the USB device will again be called CIRCUITYPY. If you have any trouble, check out Adafruit's CircuitPython guide.
- Follow Adafruit's guide for installing the proper libraries and setting the time.
- Note: in Adafruit's guide, they assume you use 21 pixels and the first pixel is unused. We thought that wasn't efficient so we designed our version to use 20 pixels. Where you see pixels[i+1] = COLOR, please change the code to pixels[i] = COLOR.
