Uncluttered Clear Clock. Useful for the Elderly, Dementia Sufferers or Anyone Really!

This is a clock for the elderly which has a simple uncluttered display on a high visibility screen.

I made it for my Mum who has difficulty reading segmented LCD displays due to poor contrast and the shape of segmented characters. She doesn't have a convenient place to plug a device in, so a tradition tablet-based "Dementia Clock" doesn't work for her, so this is a battery operated clock.

This clock is based on the M5paper module from M5.

It offers an e-ink display, battery and an ESP32 controller supported on the Arduino platform (and others).

Unfortunately, the battery is small so operation of the clock from the battery depends on minimising the power consumption which is done by exploiting the e-ink display's ability to retain an image while not powered.

I use a bracket as a support but the case has magnets built in so you could use those to position the display.

Because the battery in the M5 is small and the ESP32 controller is quite power hungry, the code operates in an unusual way for an Arduino project. There is a function to shutdown the controller for a number of seconds to be restarted by the real-time clock. Unfortunately, the controller re-starts as if reset and executes code from the start with no history of execution before the shutdown.

There are probably lots of ways round this issue but what I've done is to have two programs. One just sets up the real-time clock, the second is the functioning clock which updates the screen each minute and has a minimum of code to keep the controller run-time as short as possible.

The clock uses a True-type font stored in the ESP32 FLASH memory. This is stored using the SPIFFS (SPI Flash File System) to avoid using an SD card in the M5paper, which would consume a bit more power.

Unfortunately, there is no support for creating an SPIFF file in the Arduino IDE so you need to use Arduino.cc (1.8) which has an add-on tool to do this for this step at least.

Find the SPIFF tool here. Put the jar file in the Arduino tools directory.

Find the Open Sans Extra Bold True Type font here. Rename this file to OpenSansExtrabold.ttf and place this in the data directory of the Set_Clear_Clock Arduino project.

Open the Set_Clear_Clock project in Arduino.cc and select the COM port for the M5paper.

Select the ESP32 Sketch Data Upload tool and upload the ttf file to the M5paper.

Edit the time and date constants to the current time and download the code to the M5paper.

When the M5paper re-starts, the display should be like the image shown above.

Now load the Run_Clear_Clock into Arduino.cc and download the code to the M5paper then disconnect the M5paper.

When the M5paper re-starts, the display should be like the image shown above.

Notes:

The "day" line of the display will alternate with "charging" when the M5paper is connected to a USB port. This continues even when the M5paper is fully charged (in an hour from fully discharged). The display updates continuously when connected.

When the battery is discharged, the time/day display is replaced by "Low Battery". The display only updates daily in this state to preserve charge to run the real-time clock so that the correct time is displayed when the unit is charged.