Maker Greg Smith has introduced a classic clock from his childhood bang updated, including a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller board working MicroPython to a Greymark Binary Clock from the Seventies.
“Once I was a boy (ca. 1978) I used to be an electronics hobbyist. I’d construct some weird circuit on a breadboard and present it to my mother, who was enthusiastic, however didn’t know what it was,” Smith recollects. “She requested me to construct her one thing ‘that was in a field’ so she might present it to associates and kinfolk after they came visiting.”
“At about that point we have been doing an electronics section in my highschool store class,” Smith continues, “and had the possibility to construct a mission from a package. I shared the catalog with my mom and collectively we picked out the Graymark Binary Clock.”
Having efficiently assembled the package, the Binary Clock — which informed the time utilizing 18 particular person LED lights on the entrance of the picket housing — was an on the spot hit. “Till the day she died she proudly displayed her Binary Clock on the mantle,” Smith says. “Guests would invariably ask about it and she or he’d educate them to learn binary and inform the time. Sadly, a few years earlier than she handed, the clock fell from the mantle and the circuit board cracked.”
The clock’s authentic motherboard had suffered harm following a fall earlier in its life. (📷: Greg Smith)
Having inherited the clock, Smith opted to switch its innards moderately than restore the cracked board — and gave the classic machine a really trendy improve within the course of. Quite than the cracked motherboard, “heartbeat” circuit board, and first logic board, Smith reused solely the unique case, LEDs — other than one which had failed — and the management switches.
Rather than the remainder of the {hardware}, Smith put in a Raspberry Pi Pico W — a compact, low-cost growth board primarily based round Raspberry Pi’s in-house dual-core RP2040 microcontroller and a devoted Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) radio. Initially prototyped on a breadboard then transferred to a perfboard, the alternative innards run a MicroPython program which mimics the operation of the unique clock — together with the power to set the time utilizing the unique switches.
In addition to the unique bodily buttons, the clock will be managed over Bluetooth Low Power for simpler setting. (📷: Greg Smith)
“I needed a greater interface,” Smith provides. “I programmed the Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) chip to hook up with an exterior app. I used MicroPython’s ‘bluetooth’ library and a pair [of] instance modules from their GitHub repo (ble_simple_peripheral and ble_advertising) to configure the BLE. [Then] I created a mini-CLI (Command-Line Interface) with a easy ‘verb/object’ language to manage the clock.”
The total mission write-up is out there on Smith’s web site, Dr. Francintosh, with supply code accessible on GitHub below an unspecified license.
