Diy word clock how to#
Diy word clock download#

That means: Connect the LED-strip pieces in each row together (GND -> GND, 5V -> 5V, Data -> Data).Īs you can see in figure 5, I connected all the power lines and I made a common +5V and common GND rail on the left and right of the mounting-board. Now comes the tricky part: You’ll have to connect the LED-strip pieces together, so that they form one long strip again. From the back, the mounting-board should look like mine in figure 5. At both sides of each LED-strip drill three holes near to the copper contacts on the strip, as shown in figure 4. Align all the strips, so that the arrow always point in the same direction.Īfter this is done, you’ll need to drill some 2mm holes. My strip had a little arrow on it, indication the way, that the control signal will take (see fig. Make sure, that you place them in the right direction. If your strip is not a self-adhesive one, use some regular glue and let it dry. When you are happy with the layout, peel off the protective film from the back of the LED-strip and mount the LEDs. However, the more you use per word, the better it will look at the end, because all the letters of that one word will light up evenly. I used all 60 LEDs that came on the strip, but you could use less, if you want to. Try to evenly distribute LEDs over the words. (Note: I used a foam-board instead of the plywood, but I'd recommend using wood, because the foam tends to melt when soldering and it is a potential fire and health danger).Īfterwads lay out the LED strip on this panel. It should look like shown in figure 1 afterwards. Afterwards grab a pen and transfer the letters, that you want to light up later, to the plywood panel. It was not hard to do, but you’ll have to do all the wiring by hand, so get ready for at least two hours of soldering!įirst, take one of the two plywood panels and your front-face and align them, so that the front-face sits on the panel. This was the part, that took me a long time to do. Don't forger to make a cutout for either a dc-jack or a cable somewhere on the case, preferable on the bottom side. Simply add that, depending on the chosen material.įrom the back, the case should look like mine shown in figure 3. Don't forget to account for the thickness of your laser-cut watch-face here. This way, they will be flush with the edges of the wooden case and it will look great when finished, as displayed in figure 2. I recommend, that you build the outer shell first and then use the front-plate and the watch-face as guides when building the inner frame, so you get a little lip where these two components can be mounted later in the process. This is, where the foam separators will be placed later.

There should be a 250×250 blank space in the center of the case. Glue the wood pieces together like shown in figure 1. The inner one acts as a spacer and mounting place for the LED-boards. The complete case is made out of two squares and the inner one should fit perfectly into the outer square.

You'll need this later and I'll discuss it later in this instructable.

Diy word clock how to#

See your laser-cutting service's guidelines on how to do this properly, because this varies from service to service. In photoshop you need to change your font to the stencil font you downloaded earlier and lay everything out, so that it looks nicely on a 270x270mm image (this will be the size of our front-place), as shown in figures 2 and 3.Īfterwards convert the text to a path and export everything as a vector-graphics for laser-cutting. You can also use GIMP here, if you don't have photoshop. 1).Īfter that was done, I copied all my text and pasted it into photoshop. Afterwards I added the necessary words (It is, quarter, half, one, two. For this process I simply typed out 12 lines of gibberish consisting of 12 characters per line. Unfortunately, I didn't think about that when I built my clock, so some letters are missing their inner parts. Which means, that all the characters have the same width and are completely connected.

Diy word clock download#

You can download it here.įirst you need to find a nice monospace, stencil font.

I’ve compiled a list with similar LED-strip controllers. Important! You can use any LED-strip you want, as long as the LEDs can be addressed separately or you build your own controller, that switches on the separate segments. 330 ohm resistor (or something close to it, just for short-circuit protection) LED strip with WS2812B or similar integrated controllerĢ. These can be hard to find, I got them from amazon.ġ. Will be used as a spacer and to make up a grid for the words on the clock, so the light doesn’t bleed through to other letters that are not meant to be illuminated. You should be able to get most of these components in your local hardware store (All measurements in mm!):ġ.

For the case you’ll need the following items.