Custom Light Box

Made a light box measuring 17 by 11 inches using MDF wood, acryllic glass and CCFL tube lights. Light box can be hung on a wall or stood on a shelf or table. Powered by a 12 volt power supply and has a dimmer to control light level.

Weird LED Clock

I'm always thinking about LED clocks, how to make an original one. I've made one a couple of years ago, it was inspired by the beautiful nixie clocks but using LED's instead of high voltage expensive nixie tubes. Now I'm still thinking about 7-segment displays (the numbers that make up a digital clock), how to make my own. It's hard to make your own using existing clock hardware. The route towards writing software and making your own pcb's is still a bit off-putting to me, but I might get to that some day. In the meantime tinkering with clock kits, trying to figure out how they work and especially what materials I like to combine them with. Here's an example, a test piece, of a LED clock in a clear housing on a wooden base. Added feature is bright yellow light lighting the clear housing (and the room) when the alarm goes off. It looks like something out of a James Bond movie, and that's what I like about it, it doesn't just show the time, it also has a dramatic housing around it, which, when I perfect the design will hopefully be a true unique and weird and wonderful clock.

Taking Time To Destroy A Clock

Today I did something odd. I went to buy an alarm clock and as soon as I got home, took it apart. Which was easy at first, you have the display with almost invisible LED's, there's an adapter converting 220 Volt to... something lower. There's buttons, a speaker and of course the main PCB holding the brains of the clock.

In case you want to do what I'm doing, the donor clock I'm using is a Denver EC-33, costs about 8 euro's. But I reckon you could use any alarm clock.

I realize it's not going to be easy making the display work, 4 numbers separated by jars, each needing wires to the main PCB. It's gonna be messy.

For the housing I found oak strips of wood, 4 x 35 mm and decided the width of the housing should be 3 strips wide, 105 mm.

In the supermarket I selected jars that hold a spicy sauce called "sambal", which I happen to like, so no wasting here. Put the contents in a bigger jar, washed the 4 jars and they're ready to go.

While I start on the housing I'm going to have to figure out which wire out of the PCB connects to which LED eventually in the display. I took a photo of the original display and will trace the lines to get a schematic view of the different power lines.

Next time hope to have some of the housing ready and a single number display test to find out if this could actually work, since I have no clue how much power the display is using now and if that's sufficient for the upscaling I'm planning using powerful 3 mm red LED's.

Poor Man's Nixie Clock

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog. Ever seen a Nixie clock? They are the coolest of the coolest of clocks. I instantly wanted one. But they're expensive. How about building one myself? Well, you could, you can buy a kit for about 100 euro, but it's only a real tiny clock. And I'm worried about the high voltage that the tubes use, I'm kind of inexperienced with electronics and electricity, I might kill myself...

So, why not make a clock that looks as cool as a Nixie clock but is more manageble in terms of safe use of power? That's why I want to build the poor mans Nixie clock, not cause I'm poor but because I need to find an alternative way to get the same cool clock using simple parts and low current.

Let's get to it. I made a drawing and I'm gonna use oak wood for the housing, as well as aluminium and the tubes will have to be substituted by small jars :) In which I will put 7-segment displays which I will also make myself, don't know yet how.

Next time, handling wood and chosing a donor alarm clock.

See ya soon.