This is a rather neat looking digital clock which uses green LEDs to show the time… but the interesting part of this digital LED timepiece is that it plays a game of Pong. The time is displayed at the top in the centre while the two paddles move up and down the sides of the clock, batting the ball across the clock’s surface at each other.
The game is programmed to play automatically and the ball will be bounced to each side for a minute, at the end of the minute one of the sides will score by hitting the ball past the paddle. Once a point has been scored, the ‘scoreboard’ updates to show the current time by updating the clock to the next minute. So if the time is currently 16:45, then a point will be scored when a minute is up so the clock will now be updated to 16:46.
The clock’s components include:
- two green LED matrix screen panels,
- an Arduino Duemilanove,
- a DS1307 clock chip, with a Crystal oscillator,
- one 3.3v coin cell battery,
- an Arduino prototyping shield,
- one 16-pin IDC Socket,
- two push buttons,
- one USB lead and one Mains to USB power adapter,
oh and of course wires, solder, and some spare time!
If you fancy giving this a go check this link out for a full guide on what you need and how to put it all together, and check out the video above to see the clock in action.