LED Aduino Horizontal Edge Lit Clock WemosD1

I picked up the idea for this Horizontal Edge lit LED clock from an Instructable some time ago called Ribba word clock, the clock uses a Arduino Wemos D1 and gets its Time from a server, the creator of the clock is Neotrace and a big thanks to him for supplying the code. The code is manipulated to suit this clock . I believe the RIBBA clock originated from the Whitestone Clock Company Instructable so another shout out for coming up with the design originally.

The original RIBBA clock uses 144 LEDS this clock uses 22 LEDS

The time is displayed in 5 minute intervals and the letters 'about' become a darker blue as it approaches the 5. For example: say its approaching 3pm, at 5 to the letters 'about' will light up white and gradually turn a darker blue every minute up until 3pm, but it could be any five minute interval, it will become apparent.

We are using cast Acrylic and I am using Vetric Cut2D for the design of this clock, the base can be made of anything, for the purpose of this Instructable its 12mm MDF as its what I had to hand and its in 3 sections but doesn't need to be.

You will need to have a CNC machine for cutting the slots in both the Acrylic and MDF plus engraving the clock letters.

Personal Protective equipment, Dust mask, Safety Glasses and Ear protection.

WS2812 LED addressable strip x 22 LED's

Wemos D1 mini

MDF or similar for the base

470Ohm Resistor (between Wemos and Data Line of the Strip)
1000uF Capacitor( Suppy to the Wemos 5v and G)

Blackboard Paint or whatever you choose.

I found a suitable piece of Acrylic offcut from a previous project and input the dimensions into Cut2D, in this case it is 270mm x 60mm x 5mm.

Starting point is bottom left corner of the Acrylic.

Create a rectangle and then fillet the top corners 10mm radius for a more pleasing look.

We now need to create the slots which go in between the LEDS when the acrylic is fitted, there is only a need to create one rectangle 60mm high 3mm width and then use an array to space out the rest, centralize the slots if there is a need to, we can now get to the letters for the clock.

In this section we are going to find a suitable font. It can be as quirky as you like or you can make it look a bit smart with a font like Times Roman or Monotype Corsiva, I went for quirky so chose a free font called Porky's

In the text section we input the text vertically, so letter return, letter return etc etc, Text height in this case is 4.5mm click the apply Tab and it appears on the design, clicking it again allows you to align the text on the design.

Go through the motions of applying the text and alignment and the next step will be to flip the text using the mirror tab, flip horizontally without making a copy, we engrave the back of the acrylic leaving the face side smooth.

In this section we are cutting the slots out in the acrylic so we highlight all, then go to the pocket tab as the slots are rectangles, select a 1mm bit and depth will be 5.2mm as we want to cut all way through the Acrylic.

Review the cut and rename.

We now highlight all the letters and select the Engraving tab, pressure is 0.2 it doesn't need to be a deep cut for the letters to be illuminated.

Select review and rename.

We now need to cut out the design, a profile tab is used for this operation, highlight the outer section of the design, Depth is 5.2 mm...1mm bit add tabs, you only need about 4 tabs to hold in place.

The outer edge of the acrylic can be be lightly sanded, but if you want a crystal clear edge then you can use a blow torch, but Mapp gas is needed for this due to the higher burning temperature, there are tutorials on polishing Acrylic edges, I sanded and its fine, but be careful not to scratch the surfaces.

To Cut out the piece, we use the profile tab, depth is 5.2....2mm router bit and we need tabs to hold in place when the cutting is complete.

We can now move onto the base.

For this operation, we need to cut slots in the MDF to accommodate the Acrylic and also a slot for the LED strip

Ideally we need to leave approx 15/20mm at each end of the MDF.

The slot for the Acrylic will be 5.1 width for a snug fit, and the slot for the LED strip will be 12mm.

We input the dimensions of the MDF into the set up and initiate our first cut which will be a pocket, our MDF is 8mm depth and we want to cut through it, bit size is 3mm

Calculate, Review and rename.

We now need to create a cavity in the bottom slice of the MDF this is to house the Wemos D1 and Capacitor etc.

The only LED strip I had to hand was a length of WS2812 60 LEDs per metre so had to concertina the strip and hot glue in place, in all honesty this was a pain to fit, but its all I had at the time.

The strip is aligned to the bottom of the Acrylic slot, the LEDs are spaced out to line up....ish with the slots on the Acrylic, this proved to be harder than I had imagined as well.

With the LED's in place its time to sort the electronics, in all honesty there isn't a lot to it.

Wemos D1 Has a 1000uF capacitor between 5v and Ground, 5v and ground feeds to the strip and the data wire to the strip has a 470ohm resistor in line and that is fed from D6 on the Wemos D1 and that is it.

I just held everything in place with Hot glue and had installed a micro usb cable to the Wemos and used hot glue to hold it in place.

I have changed this code from the original as the LED clock only has 22 LED's not a lot else needed changing really as its a 12 Hour clock code.

You can change the colours to suit what time if you so wish, I just left it with the 'about' changing different shades of blue as it comes up to 5 minute intervals, all other letters are white.

You have to choose the server pool as shown in the code, I opted for time.google.com and it worked fine

You have to input your own Wifi SSID inside the quote marks and also your own Wifi Password.

The only other thing you will need to change is the void readtime(byte *second, byte *minute, byte *hour, byte *dayOfWeek, byte *month, byte *year) (dateTime = NTPch.getNTPtime(0.0, 1);

You change the first zero of the above to a 1 if in Europe, zero if in the UK. i:e 1.0, 1 for Europe.

All in all, we have a top section, mid section (which works as a spacer for the LED's and components) and the bottom section. I just clamped all 3 together, drilled some pilot holes in each corner(Be careful not to go all the way through) and used 4 screws to secure.

This type of clock comes into its own in a dark room but the time can still be made out through the day.

I was going to paint the inside of the slots to stop light leakage between the letters but tried one and thought better of it, 3D printed black spars may work.

Comparing the code for this clock to the original code gives you some insight on how the code can be manipulated to suit other projects. I'm far from being an expert in Arduino but managed to alter this code to suit my clock

You can change the size of this Edge lit Horizontal clock to any size you want, have a different base etc etc.

Hope you have enjoyed this Instructable and thanks for looking