From customer email

Just wanted to let you know I finished putting together my Wise Clock 4 and it looks and works great!  Only took me about 6 months to get started it J.  Thanks for putting together such a nice kit.  I didn’t install an xbee on it yet but hope to experiment with that sometime this year.   I really like all the different modes – and have to read up on what they all do.  Is there a good link you can point me to that describes them?  Hope you are still working on new clock ideas.  Think I saw your name as a supporter of the word clock out on kickstarter?

Bill

On the 3216 LED display from Sure Electronics:

I did look at the clocking relationships on the scope.
The clock to data hold timing on the HC164 was marginal, 2ns, versus -2ns typical and 4ns minimum. Meaning it will probably work, but it's not certain. CLK, DATA and WR are buffered through 2 sections of an HC04, with a delay of 11ns, but CS_OUT is not, so with every successive board in a chain this timing degrades. They ran out of HC04 gates. Installing the 10pf capacitor at C1 might help, but it's not ideal.

Don

The zip file did the trick. I now have them both up and running. 

I've attached a pic for your viewing.

Brian

Just wanted to let you know that I received my kit yesterday and have already put it together.  I was surprised, having not done any soldering in a long time, that it went together easily and worked on the first try!

Michael

Big Thank YOU guys!

Wise Clock 4 - Status update

It's been a slow (and hot, temperature-wise) summer, spent mostly answering customer (and other Arduino fellows asking for help) emails, with almost no notable achievements.

• Improved the design of the Wise Clock 4+ board by adding support for the JY-MCU bluetooth module connected as shown in the next photo (and controlled using the SoftwareSerial library on pins D20 and D21).

• Created the software framework for a Scheduler (subject of a future post); this should support features like multiple alarms, job activation at given times etc.
• Beside his great contribution to the code, MikeM found a fix for the SoftwareSerial bug on ATmega1284P (D20 and D21 did not work because JTAG is enabled); he also sent this photo of his stack of Wise Clock 4s with dual 5mm LED displays.

• Added to my to-do list:
• Android app to remote-control Wise Clock 4;
• remote sensors to start and stop the chronometer function of the clock (request from Javier);
• join a WiFi network in a user-friendly, easy-to-configure, manner;
• automatic adjustment of the display brightness with an LDR, as suggested by Adam, who already hacked his Wise Clock 4, as shown below.

I also got a bit upset with Sure Electronics for the (mechanical) change on their latest revision of the 3216 LED display: the vertical distance between the holes is about 3mm greater. I thought I would have to give away the small stock of laser-cut plates I had, since they would not fit anymore. Turns out that there is a non-wasteful solution though: enlarge the holes with a small file (which I do myself to all displays, until I finish the old stock of plexiglass plates).

As always, any comments, suggestions and contributions are appreciated.

Wise Clock 4 with the 5mm 3216 LED display

The Wise Clock 4 board was designed to be plugged directly into the 3mm 32x16 LED display from Sure Electronics. I am often asked how it would connect to the 5mm 32x16 LED display.
The photos below will give the answer to this question.

First, the 2x8-pin female header provided with the kit needs to be replaced with a 2x8-pin male header (or two 8-pin male headers side-by-side). Place the header on the top side, as shown in the picture above.
Ideally, a "shrouded 2x8-pin header" (like this) should be used here, since that will also force the ribbon cable connector to be inserted with the right orientation (notice that the peg is closer the FTDI connector).

Then connect the board to the display using the ribbon cable (coming with the display), as shown in the next photo, and very importantly, paying attention to the orientation of the connector.

In case you wanted to chain a second display, just connect, with a second ribbon cable, the OUT connector of the first with the IN connector of the second.

The Wise Clock 4 software is able to correctly handle the second display if you modify this line in file HT1632.h, from

#define NUM_DISPLAYS 1

to

#define NUM_DISPLAYS 2

When fully lit, the current consumption of the displays are around 500mA. The best way to power them, especially when chained, would be through the terminal block, with the the red and black wires (as shown). In this case, the Wise Clock 4 board is powered from the display (through the ribbon cable), so you don't need to use an USB cable.

The easier alternative is to use the USB cable. This will provide power to the display(s) as well, but the voltage to the second display may drop below 5V, thus making it less bright, or even behaving erratically. Also, keep in mind that the USB port on a PC may not be able to supply the current for two displays (1A or so). If you notice problems with the second display, first step is to check the voltage to be around 5V.

NOTE: Make sure you use a 5V regulated power source. Anything above 6V will fry the board, and probably the display too. Also, make sure your power source is adequate for the power consumption. Use at least a 2A (10W) power source.

Animation on Wise Clock 3/4

Mr Ruud did it again :)  He took this video showing a few more features he added.

1. ANIMATIONS

It is now possible to create your own animations which are stored on the SD card.

The APPS menu entry ANIM allows for continously showing one or all animations files.

Animation files are named: anim0.wc3 - anim9.wc3. 

There are also 4 special animation files named: time00.wc3, time15.wc3, time30.wc3 and time45.wc3. 

If ANIM+ is selected in the SETUP menu and the BIG mode is active then every quarter the correponding animation is shown once with a random speed. 

Besides the four time*.wc3 animation file, there are currently 4 sample animations: anim1.wc3 - anim4.wc3.

You may create your own animations (there is NO programming involved) by creating individual screens in Excel and then use a small conversion program to create the *.wc3 file. 

As the animations are stored on the SD card you can make them as big as you like.

2. LOGGING

If the LOG+ menu is selected in the SETUP menu then the following items will be logged in the wc3log.csv file:

• every hour the current temperature is logged both in Celsius and Fahrenheit (32.5 degrees is stored as 325)

• all entries created in the time clock (TCLOK) app are now stored in the log file

The wc3log.csv file is an ASCII Comma Separated Values file, which can be opened in Excel for further analysis (or for creating graphs etc).

The average log record is about 25 bytes long. The temperature logging will take 24 x 25 bytes =  600 per day. (So the 2 Megabyte log file will be full after about 9 years.)

A warning message ("log= @ End") will be shown when the log file is almost full, an error message ("log= FULL!") will appear if no more records can be written to the log file.

The SETUP menu entry CLRLG allows for clearing the complete log file, it will take about 10 minutes to clear a 2 megabyte log file.

Mike M. integrated all of the above changes with a previous version that works with FAT32. This code is available here.

Wise Clock 4 with integrated Bluetooth

Wise Clock 4 can now hold a Bluetooth module outside of the XBee socket, as shown in the pictures below.

The communication with the BT module uses SoftwareSerial on pins D20/PC4 (Tx) and D21/PC5 (Rx).
The module is powered with 3V3 and the Rx line is level-shifted.

I bought a few of these Bluetooth modules from different sources, mostly ebay. Some of them did not work: my PC's Bluetooth could not "discover" them. Once SMD-soldered to the board, it is very difficult to figure out what's wrong and even de-solder and remove them. My advice for anyone using these modules is to check them before soldering them to any board/breakout. An easy way to do this is to solder wires on pins 12 (Vcc) and pin 13 (ground), as shown in the photo below (left), power with 3.3V, then try to pair it with a Bluetooth host (PC, Android; iPhone won't work since it requires an Apple-approved chip).

The module's relevant pins are shown in the diagram below (photo from ebay seller):

I did not test this myself (the experiment may cost about $7), but it seems that these Bluetooth modules only tolerate approx 3.3V and powering with 5V will fry them.

If you already have an Wise Clock 3/4 and want to add Bluetooth functionality (simultaneous to WiFi or XBee), you can add this module to the clock. Connections are through 4 wires: Rx/Tx go to D20/D21 (pins 26 and 27 of the processor), VCC to 5V, GND to ground. Note that this module has on-board power adapter for 3.3V and level-shifter for the logic lines.