Arduino enthusiast Kalshagar has documented his minimalist, Arduino-based clock detects your presence as you come close to it. The distance between the clock and human is measured with a Sharp infra-red distance sensor, and the closer you are the brighter the backlight in the LCD module. And for accurate time-keeping, Kalshagar has used the excellent Maxim DS3232 real-time clock IC. Here is the clock mounted in an iPod case:
You can never have too many clocks and this example is certainly different. For more information, including the Arduino sketch and circuit, visit Kalshagar's project page here. And we're on twitter, 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.
