David Moisan wanted to outfit his local cable access station with a network-synchronized clock, but since an off-the-shelf NTP clock made for television stations would have cost around $1,000, purchasing even a single clock was out of the question. Not one to be deterred, he hacked up his own from a #Twatch, the ethernet-enabled LCD backpack from our friends at Dangerous Prototypes. Head over to David’s blog to check out the code and the incredibly thorough manual he wrote for the project. While this is is the first embedded microcontroller project David has ever finished, he assures us it won’t be his last. [via Dangerous Prototypes]

BY Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson is a Brooklyn-based creative technologist, contributing editor for MAKE magazine, and co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi. He's also the owner of Awesome Button Studios, a technology consultancy. Highlights from his work include the Descriptive Camera (a camera which outputs a text description instead of a photo) and The Enough Already (a DIY celebrity-silencing device). Matt's work has been featured at The Nevada Museum of Art, The Rome International Photography Festival, Milan Design Week and has garnered attention from The New York Times, Wired, and New York Magazine.

3 Responses to LCD Clock Syncs via Network

  1. I bought this one a year or so ago for under $100. I put it in a nice extruded aluminum case. It sits in my wiring closet.
    http://shop.tuxgraphics.org/electronic/detail_ntp_clock.html

  2. ka1axy, nice link. The device I based this on is out of production, so I am looking for alternatives to recommend to others. There are a *lot* of ways to implement an NTP display nowadays.

    My using the #Twatch was happenstance–I’d bought a Netduino Plus earlier and was going to try it out–with a nearly-identical LCD display I’d gotten at the MIT Flea! The Netduino will work for this use for about the same parts cost and size.

    Next step is a bigger display. Unless someone makes a tablet-sized HD44780-based LCD, :) I’ll use regular seven-segment LED’s.

  3. Ya congratulations to you David Moisan for great work in TIME!! :)

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