This cool DIY clock kit from Adafruit Industries comes with an animated Pong inspired display by default, but it can easily be hacked into just about anything you want.
You’ll need some basic soldering & hand tools that are necessary to assemble it. The good news is that this is a pretty basic kit and even if its your first soldering project, it shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 hours to put together.
Here’s a video demonstration of the animated Pong clock in action:
MONOCHRON Open Source Retro Clock
- 128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display
- ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too for hacking ease)
- Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic
- Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze
- Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years
- European/US and 12/24 hour time display as well as date
- Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with
- Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in
- Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two
Comes with: clock kit (includes all parts, programmed chips and LCD), coin battery, enclosure, 9VDC power supply for 220V or 110V.
The Monochron Clock Kit v. 1.0 ($80) is currently out of order over at Adafruit Industries.
(Retro Thing via Geeky Gadgets and Technabob)
Great Gadget, might get one!