Making your own clock for fun or a gift to others is always a neat Arduino project for the beginner or enthusiast alike, and Instructables member NextFab has documented a hybrid analogue/digital clock that can be made quite easily.
Using twelve LEDs, the clock can display the time down to the nearest half hour, and uses a real-time clock IC for accurate time-keeping. Once the circuit has been made you can fit it inside all sorts of enclosures, however the project had a neat laser-cut face, for example:
For all the details including Arduino sketch and construction notes, visit the clock Instructable page. And for more, we're on facebook, twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
The most important part of any clock project is the inclusion of an accurate real-time clock IC. Here at Freetronics we have the Maxim DS3232 real-time clock IC module:
Apart from keeping accurate time for years due to the temperature-controlled oscillator and having a tiny coin-cell for backup, it is very simple to connect to your Arduino project. A driver library allows your program to easily set or read the time and date. Perfect for clock projects, dataloggers or anything that needs to know the date and time. Furthermore it contains a digital thermometer and 236 bytes of non-volatile memory to store user settings and other data. For more information, check out the module page here.
