Softball Retirement Clock (Raspberry Pi Pico 2W )

A Retirement Countdown Clock for my Wife. She loves Softball, so I made it inside a Softball. Possibly reusable as a countdown until the season starts for a future use!

Softball

Raspberry PI Pico 2 W

7 segment display (TM1637 0.56" LED Display Digital Tube Decimal 7 Segment 4 Digit Clock Double Dots Module Serial Driver Board)

Real Time Clock (RTC)

Solder/ Soldering Iron

STL for stand and Bezel

Battery

This is one of the hardest parts, I had asked a Machinist friend who had access to alot of drill presses and cutting tools to help me with this one. Basicially we cut the hole for the screen (Make sure to Measure!). Then we cut an access hole in the bottom of the Softball to insert various drillbits and cutting implements. This was just a process of removing cork from the softball until there was enough room for the electronic components.

As a note on this step, you could alternativly de-lace the softball and remove the leather cover, cut what you wanted and re-lace the cover back on.

This ball stand has the radius for a 12" softball. Feel free to use this file or make your own stand to hold the ball.

Here is a simple wiring design make using WokWi. Here is the public link to the Project

https://wokwi.com/projects/425128460723364865

Here are the files used in this project. you can edit the "run once" file to set the time originially

Try to stuff everything into the softball, This can be tricky as the hole is circular...do your best. Some of the clock face was trimmed to allow it to fit the curve of the ball. i used a bunch of hot glue to mount the LCD and bezel, then did the best I could for the rest of the electronics.

I originally had planned on using a battery source to power the system. The STL is designed with a hole inside it for the battery pack. I was unable to get a reliable 5 Volt supply from the battery packs I was using. I ran into multiple issues...first one was the clock uses too little amp draw to keep a 5V USB pack turned on. Then I ran into the problem that once I forced thedraw high enough to register with the USB Power pack, it then drained the battery in about 10 hours...so I was recharging the battery pack every day. I am sure there is a better solution. I opted to just power with a run of the mill Wall Wart providing 5V over MicroUSB consistently.