Arduino Digital Clock

Overview

An Arduino digital clock is a project that uses Arduino UNO Board (provided), some jumper cables and a Crystal LED screen display.

Arduino Digital Clock

Functionality

The Arduino digital clock uses the Crystal LED screen display to display an initial time of 1 AM. We can change the time using one of two buttons: One that controls the hour and one that controls the minutes.

How it's Made

To create an Arduino digital clock:

  1. Get an Arduino UNO Board, jumper cables and a Crystal LED screen display
  2. Connect the cables to the Arduino following the provided wiring diagram.
  3. Write a program in Arduino IDE to display the initial time of 1:00 pm and creating loops in the program to contain the numbers to their respective values. When Hour is above 12 then reset to 1 When minutes is above 59 then reset to 0
  4. Upload the code to the Arduino board.
  5. Test the clock and configure screen contrast as needed
Clock Assembly

Our final thoughts

The Arduino digital clock is a project that me and Seraj decided to create due to being a simple yet interesting concept to create. It can also be used in your everyday life. You just have to make sure the backlight timeout to a longer duration in the code. This was overall a pretty fun experience for me since it is the first time that I've dealt with an Arduino board. There were obviously many problems with trying to get it work such as the screen contrast being too high, the screen time-out being too fast and the wiring process taking much more time than anticipated due to connecting them in the wrong place. We changed the values in the code and also double and triple checked our wiring to make sure they're in the right place. In the end, the problem was with our Crystal LED Screen Display. We had a faulty one in place and a quick switch was all we needed to get the entire thing to work. It thought me that even the smallest errors can mess up your work completely. This project has also taught me that you NEED to understand your code to have your project working at its full potential. You can't just copy and paste it in and call it a day as we did.