Edge-lit 7-Segment Display Clock Using Raspberry Pi Pico

In Episode 600 becon_dave on the community site commented that along with the cuckoo clock, a miniature 3D diorama scene could be added (like a traditional cuckoo clock), and suggested that a edge-lit multi-layered laser engraved scene could be used.

So, in this episode of Element14 Presents, Katie introduces us to her latest project: creating an acrylic edge-lit clock.

The inspiration stemmed from discussions in the community about edge-lit dioramas, sparking Katie's interest in utilizing a laser cutter for this endeavor. Beginning with a simple etched acrylic design, she outlines her vision for illuminating each number on the clock face.

Katie experiments with edge-lit laser engraved acrylic by making a clock with a Raspberry Pi Pico, but ensure that it could be a platform that can be changed in the future, so maybe one day we’ll see a scene!

#0:00 Welcome to element14 presents
#0:18 Overview
#1:18 The Plan
#4:33 The Schematic And Design
#10:22 Assembly
#13:58 Time To Test!
#15:27 Give your Feedback

#homeautomation #raspberrypi #arduinoproject #smartroom #tutorial

Visit the element14 Community for more great activities and free hardware:

[benjaminfrohns]

Interesting concept, good job building it.

[newtlab]

Одлични сте сви у команди, мада је најбољи мој земљак 👍👍👍🇷🇸

[MAYERMAKES]

Very flashy Idea! I hope we get some more bonus footage of it displaying time in a dark room on the community page!

[philhutchinson]

Love this, You could certainly do some staggered rainbow effects with each segment.

[matthewfelgate]

That's a cool project doing the 7 segment display in that way. Thanks for haring.

It might be cool to do something with scenes (like foreground and background?) or maybe the sun or moon moving across the sky?

[qwaqwa]

I always wished Nixies had more parallax error, and now we have it ;-) Neat.

[BilbyBaggins]

Neat project!

In terms of next steps... animation? You have 7 segments at each position - with the existing layout you could cut acrylics to make for example a figure "walk" across all four positions. If you modified the board layout to interleave and widen the positions you could have two 14-segment animations. Not enough frames for a "smooth" look, but lots of options a-la the old neon signs.

[awofman]

I think that if you covered the acrylic with black (paint, paper, whatever's handy, although using paper would allow for testing without any permanent consequences if it doesn't look good) except for the 7-segment area you would get less bleed-through of light and it would make the display clearer. Although this might be something that looks a lot better to the human eye than it looks on camera. You could probably just do one surface. That also might allow sandwiching the segment layers tightly together for an even better effect, although that would make the lighting part harder.

Regardless, this is another cool idea and execution on your part.

[gower]

Why didnt you just route out a channel positive and negative in each half of the case, it would of simply slotted together then