Saturday, September 6, 2014

HDSP clock mod displays proverbs

MikeM ported this "proverb clock" to HDSP clock. I did not have a chance to try the code myself yet (I am out of displays at the moment), but he vouches for it:
The proverb code is in place and working well.  I created a simple menu, accessed by pressing the hour and the minute buttons at the same time.  I have a 12 hour/24 hour selector, brightness selector, and Proverbs on/off selector.
Grahame Marsh's original proverb list was all in upper-case because his VFD displays only handled upper-case.  I've regenerated the compressed proverb list after changing it to only capitalize the first letter.  To do more than that I'd have to proof-read each of the 770 proverbs and find all the proper nouns to capitalize.  Capitalizing the first letter as a compromise doesn't look bad.  It helps the eye find the start of the word while the proverb is scrolling.

Mike also 3D-printed this stand, re-scaling to 72% this iPhone dock from thingiverse.

Thanks Mike!

P.S. I was a backer for this kickstarter clock. I like the way it turned out. It looks pretty similar to my old BookClock, using a similar 32x8 display, but centered around a Raspberry Pi (instead of just a simple Arduino), the main reason being the need to access the internet (to get the time, quotes, personal financial data etc). The only issue with this clock is that it is not open source (well, at least not the software). But I am sure an equivalent functionality can be achieved with a WiFi module (e.g. the cheap and famous by now ESP8266) connected to BookClock's Arduino.

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