1. Why I started with this project?
i had the idea of a word clock and started googling and saw that there is already a manufacturer who sells the clocks at an extremely high price. furthermore, there were already a lot of self-made versions online and i thought to myself that it can’t be that difficult and i want to have one.
2. What I love about electronics?
i am completely inexperienced with electronics. the only circuits i have built were normal lamps i made myself out of wood and concrete. plugs, switches, sockets…that’s it. but i am very interested in it and i try to get to know it and have fun with it, even if it’s just changing the battery of my iphone or… the word clock
3. Which PCB Design Tool I use and why?
for the word clock, the first time i actually got into using fritzing. for me, it seemed like it was the easiest tool for complete beginners.
4. What’s my greatest fail with the project?
the biggest fail is that we tried 5 different microcontrollers before we finally ended up with a raspberry pi because we didn’t have to work with c++ there. i can’t program myself anyway so i was a bit tied to my friend who is a software developer and he wasn’t an expert in c++ either. we got the clock to work every time but there were always serious bugs. we’ve been at it for more than 3 years and now my friend doesn’t want to do it that much anymore. the list of fails is endless.
5. What’s my greatest win in the project?
every evening we spent with the project was very cool. i gained a lot of experience and worked for the first time with an arduino, raspberry pi, esp8266 and leds that can be controlled individually. besides, i never had so much insight into code and even if i don’t understand much at first glance, you can see through the logic very quickly and that’s fun.
6. What’s my most favorite feature AISLER?
the team
7. Photos
first setup with a real time clock
first prototype
stainless steel front panel
![Picture 4|666x500]
the ikea frame happened to fit exactly
8. GitHub