We’re impressed by this solution, though, enough so that we hope makes the PCB files available so we can build one. We’ve seen word clocks run afoul of the counter problem before, some that solved it by resorting to a stencil font, others that didn’t. Check out the video below for more details. The clock looks great and even has some value-added modes, such as a falling characters display a la The Matrix, a Pong-like mode, and something that looks a bit like Tetris. Try as he might, though, the light from adjacent cells bled through, so he printed a stand that incorporates baffles for each LED. The character mask PCB designed uses both the copper and a black solder mask to form the letters, which when lit by the array of SMD LEDs behind it glow a pleasing blue-green color against a dark background. We’ve always found the laser-cut masks to be wanting, particularly in the characters with so-called counters, those enclosed spaces such as those in a capital A or Q that would be removed by a laser cutter. The basic idea – using a PCB as the mask for the character array – is pretty clever.
Like all fun projects, found himself going through quite the design process with this one.
Whatever it is, we see a lot of word clock builds, but there’s something especially about this diminutive PCB word clock that we find irresistible.
Maybe it’s the mystery of a blank surface lighting up to piece together the time in fuzzy format, or maybe it hearkens back to those “find-a-word” puzzles that idled away many an hour.
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