Today we present you an extraordinary and interesting magnet application; creating a word clock.
Our customer built his own word clock. This original gadget was created in detail and precisely.
A word clock is a clock. These have a special feature. They do not show the time with digits and numbers, they „write“ the time.
Word clock
Metal or wood front
Used material:
- 9 Rodmagnets Ø 8 mm x 10 mm N42 holds 1.3 kg
- Hardboard 460 mm x 460 mm x 3 mm
- MDF board 460 mm x 460 mm x 16 mm
- Thin sheet DC01 500 mm x 500 mm x 1.5 mm
- Aircraft plywood maple 500 mm x 500 mm x 2 mm
- 114 LEDs (LED strip WS2812B 30 LED / m)
- Electronics ESP8266, Wemos D1 mini V3
- Silver wire, Vesper paper, USB power supply
Structure of variant 1 – LED plate
- Glue 11 strips with 10 LEDs each
A square of 299 mm x 299 mm (given by the distance between the LEDs on the strip with 30 LEDs per meter) should result. - Connect all LED strips with each other + 5V, GND and data.
Structure of variant 2 – MDF board
- Drill 114 holes of 25 mm each for the LEDs.
- Drill 9 holes of 8 mm each for the bar magnets.
- Cutout for the electronics.
- Attach the diffuser
- Cut strips of Vesper paper and cover all LED holes with adhesive tape
Front panels
- Thin sheet, 1.5 mm thick, weighing approx. 2 kg.
- This is held very well by the bar magnets and pressed perfectly against the diffuser.
- Interchangeable designs can be created through different paintwork.
- The magnet holder can be exchanged at any time.
- Aircraft plywood maple (2 mm)
- With the glued-on washers, this front plate also adheres very well to the magnet.
- At this point, small recesses are milled so that the plate lies flush with the diffuser.
Working method
The software that runs on the electronics needs a WiFi connection to get the time from an NTP server. This provides websites for configuring the clock.
The color of the LEDs and other settings can be made via these. Nice patterns are displayed at full hours.
Representation in different colors
In the following video you can see how the word clock shows the time in different colors.
We thank our customers for this phenomenal idea.
Thank you!