Stiletto |
They're always after me Lucky ROMS!
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Reged: 03/07/04
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Posts: 6472
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For reasons I can't explain, I love this thread. *nt*
07/02/12 05:51 PM
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> I needed a clock for my apartment. > > My requirements: > 1) 24-hour format. (I truly do not grok how "3:00" can stand for a time in the > afternoon, nor how "12:30" can stand for half an hour past midnight.) > 2) Must be correctly readable from across the room, without my eyeglasses. (This is a > real problem with 7-segment displays: the digits are usually smashed too close > together, making it hard to tell which digit a given segment belongs to.) > 3) Must indicate the date. (I don't have to read the date from across the room, just > the time.) > 4) Must keep good time. (It is lame to have to qualify "It's 11:28" with "by my > clock".) > 5) Must not be ridiculously expensive. (Nixie clocks, for example, are ridiculously > expensive.) > > You don't know how hard it is to find a clock that fits all these requirements unless > you've looked. (It is hard.) > > What I ended up doing was giving up and buying a kit, instead. > > Alpha Clock Five (kit) > http://evilmadscience.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/447-alphaclock > > It was on sale for US$120 or so. And I had to buy solder and borrow a soldering iron > just so I could get the bloody thing together and working. > > For a number of reasons, including that the clock was not built to show the date, I > knew I would need to modify the firmware. The firmware? Hoooo boy. Why don't you take > a look? > http://evilmadscientist.s3.amazonaws.com/source/alphafive/alphaclock_18_Rev1_0.pde > > It took me at least 16 hours of labor to get the thing working, correctly counting > days as well as hours, minutes, and seconds, and correctly interfacing with the > battery backup. And even now I'm not 100% sure I have it working properly. > > Why, oh why, can't the %&$# free market even provide a decent clock for a decent > price?
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