Time lamp

We all go around, think about something ...
The result - various ideas come to mind. Or maybe the other way around?

In childhood, I watched a movie on TV (then the Internet was not there yet). I don’t remember the name - about the border guards. At the border post there was a suspicion that the lamp that shines above the house on the “other side” conveys information. Checked - no radiation was found.
Well, they didn’t find it, okay, but the phrase stuck in my head for a long time.

In the past New Year I wanted to do something original for the holiday.
I kind of studied the controllers for a long time, I learned to blink the LED.
A thought came to my mind, but is it possible to make it possible to transmit information using a lamp? Apparently a phrase from the movie surfaced.

- And what will be interesting to people?
- A lot of everything, but the simplest is the time.

And then it began to spin ... Options, methods, schemes.
I decided to show the time with flashes of light.
Something like “three short whistles”.

Since the design will be on a high pipe, the clock circuits are excluded - whatever one may say, but they will still run away or worse - they will lag behind.
Correction over the air or IR - for a long time to do.
He stopped at the GPS-receiver. A little more expensive, of course, but a huge bunch of problems disappear.

The display principle is very simple: first, the number of flashes shows the hours, then, after a short pause - minutes.
To distinguish hours from minutes, outbreaks had different duty cycle - the hours of the outbreak are visually longer.

Not even a day passed from the idea to the first implementation.
Thanks to the breadboard left over from one of the previous projects.
I installed a powerful LED on the output of the device, sent a stream of information to the output from the enterprise to see the operation of the device from the side.
The time was read very easily.

The next morning the first critical reviews went ...
It turned out that the outbreaks very much prevented the security guard from fulfilling their duties.
But overall, the idea worked!

To improve the perception of time, I decided to make a color separation of hours and minutes.
At the same time, the pulse time is the same for hours and minutes.
Used RGB-LED strip with IP65.
Since the tape was not enough for the entire perimeter of the viewing platform of the pipe, we had to abandon the stretching along the length and make the emitter in the form of a lamp by wrapping the tape on the cylinder.
For protection against curious birds and even greater IP protection, he placed the emitter in a transparent flask. What was used as a filter for water purification.

Initially, the entire structure was placed in a flask. At the top is a GPS receiver, in the center of the cylinder is the controller board, on the cylinder is a ribbon with LEDs.
To do this, I had to open the case of the GPS receiver.
An autopsy surprised me ... The board was not varnished, a microchip was installed on the RS-232 with a temperature range from 0 to 70 degrees.
I had to cover the board with glue from the heat gun.

I didn’t like the operation of the device in the flask ... Although the LEDs are highly efficient, the efficiency is far from 100% and the whole economy warms up very well, which significantly reduces the life of the emitter.

It was decided to make the case ventilated. To do this, he designed a small process from above, covered with a cap from the capacitor case. Below for circulation remained the natural half-inch filter openings.
To protect against solar radiation, the LED strip was covered with shiny aluminum foil and poked holes for LEDs (there were a lot of them there ...).

The GPS receiver and the power supply were placed in an external box made of cast aluminum.
For the receiver to work, sawed a hole on top and closed it with a lid from the capacity for microwave ovens.
To protect against solar radiation - pasted over the block with the same shiny foil (there was no time to paint, New Year's Eve on the nose).

I mounted the block and emitter on the corner and forward, that is, up - for installation!

What happened:



For a long time I came up with the name. There were many options.
And since, in fact, this is a lamp showing time, I settled on the option “Time lamp”.
Googled, it turned out the original name.

Among the shortcomings, it can be noted that it takes a long time to count the time at the end of the hour, but on the other hand, there are no ideal hours.
From the idea to implementation, a little less than two months left after work.
The project was made as a hobby for testing ideas with a show of time by pulses of light.

Additions.

1. In the future, there is an idea to make a watch on a green laser.
Or, as a safer option - on a powerful static anti-aircraft floodlight with a small beam divergence angle.
Pros:
1. The name will change to "Ray of Time."
2. Indications will be visible from any point - just one device for a small city.
3. No towers will be needed to set the clock.

It is only necessary to solve the problem of keeping the laser / floodlight outlet clean during rainfall and leaf fall.

With a stable beam position, there should be no problems with aircraft.

The backlight in this case naturally disappears.
There will only be a display of hours and minutes.

2. The number of ways to display time is increasing.
The comments have already suggested several different options for how you can show the time.
It seems to me that most of them have a right to life, you just need to try to make such a watch and see what happens.

3. The lamp of time near.
I posted a photo of the lamp. Nearby is the unit where the power supply and GPS receiver are located.
I did not want to fix the corner with electrical tape, fixed it with a steel wire in isolation. It turned out surprisingly simple and strong.

4. Design options and emitters.
He came up with various design options. Rather, I came up with them earlier, along with the watch. Just seeing interest in the design, I decided to lay out.
Can someone do something like this or come up with their own on the basis of the principle of display applied in the “Lamp of Time”.
- Separate LED. It is possible to achieve the smallest possible size for a watch. Theoretically - reduce to the size of the LED.
- The clock, which is the backlight of the switch.
- LED built into the wall and invisible. Highlights through the wallpaper or cladding from the inside.
- Wrist Watch. The dot on the front part, the entire front part or the entire watch case may blink.
- Framing an object with a light cord.
- Weakly lit dot-LED, for example, for a room at night. Homemade firefly.
- Design in the form of a ball, cube or toy on the table.
- The crown of the New Year tree.
- A souvenir.

Continuation is yours!

5. The electric circuit.
Explanations of the electrical circuit .
1. Power supply for a specific voltage - this is it on the pipe.
The LED strip shines beautifully in the voltage range of 12 ... 13.8V.
2. If you use a GPS receiver with a TTL level, or use a clock chip as a time source, then there is no need for a MAX232 chip and the circuit becomes indecently simple.
3. If the source of time is done on the controller itself, then nothing will remain of the circuit.

6. Controller work program.
So that those who wish can easily repeat the project or remake it on a different type of controller, I post the work program in the public domain.

7. Printed circuit board.
The final part of the project additions is the printed circuit board .
Explanations
LUT technology. The hem around the board is for better paper bonding.
The mess in the supply area is + 12V from the fact that in my version the input connector and the diode were powered. Then he refused all this, he did not remodel the board.
The inscription on the circuit board + 12V corresponds to + 13.8V on the electrical circuit.
All parts are in SMD design, except for the microcontroller and one resistor in red (so that there are no jumpers on the board).
The board is made turnkey IRF7343.

That's the whole project.
Who will repeat it or do something of their own on this principle - post it on the Internet and write, it will be very interesting to see what happened.
You can leave a link on the video page “ Time Lamps ” in YouTube.
It is especially interesting to see other designs of emitters.
Or maybe someone will swing the spotlight?

PS
From the photographs taken during the installation of “Lamps of Time” I mounted a small music video .
In most frames, you can see what the “Lamp” sees from its post, and in a couple of initial frames, the “Lamp of Time” itself is noticeable from the outside.
1. The distance is 290 meters. In the frame with smoke illuminated by the Moon, there is a background violet illumination on the verge of a viewing angle. For some reason, Olga Pirags calls the “Lamp of Time” in the song an old watch. It seems like a year has not passed ...
2. Distance 425 meters. In words: “It is midnight again,” a little lower and to the left of the salute cloud, the clock says something about minutes.

PPS
Continuation of work on this topic is described at the end of the article " Do it yourself. City Christmas tree ."

Good luck to all!

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