LED Display Shows Time and RSS Feeds

Computers & Mobile Technology

Bob Alexander wrote in with his elegant USB clock/web data display:

When I built my Homemade Digital Clock, I shamelessly overdesigned it. It had an eight character alphanumeric display (plus two discrete LEDs for a colon), four more discrete LEDs for indicators, two printed circuit boards, and two microcontrollers (three, if you count the GPS it uses as its time source), one of which was running at 20MHz. That’s more processing power than the Apollo spacecraft had on board! All for a stupid clock!

Anyway, when I had my clock’s printed circuit boards made, I had them make several. Now, I’ve added a USB port to one of them, connected it to my PC, and written a program in C# to control it. It can fetch data from local files or the web, extract specific pieces of data, format them and display them on the LEDs. The user can enter C# expressions that evaluate to true or false and cause the discrete LEDs to light up (and even flash). The user can also configure alarm sounds and actions to take when the front panel buttons are pressed.

Also, the replica Altair 8800 in the background is sexayy!

2 thoughts on “LED Display Shows Time and RSS Feeds

  1. Luis Lopez-Garcia says:

    Woah! Is that an Altair 8800?

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

My interests include writing, electronics, RPGs, scifi, hackers & hackerspaces, 3D printing, building sets & toys. @johnbaichtal nerdage.net

View more articles by John Baichtal

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK