Summary of The useless but mazing QR-clock using Arduino
The article describes a unique Arduino-based clock that displays the current time through QR codes on a color LCD shield. A Python script on a PC generates and sends QR code pixel data via serial communication to the Arduino, which then shows the corresponding QR code for the time. QR codes are produced using Google's infographic service, and the project uses downloadable scripts for managing images and formats. While the clock is largely impractical, it creatively combines hardware and software to display time visually through QR codes.
Parts used in the QR-clock project:
- Arduino UNO
- Color LCD & Joystick shield for Arduino
- USB cable for Arduino
- A computer
I got this idea for a while but I never had the chance to try it out. Friday, a workmate gave me a LCD shield for Arduino and I thought that was the right time to build a clock that comunicate the time through QR-codes. Of course, it’s extremely useless (as most of the clocks nowadays).
In the video below you can see the clock booting up and loading 3 different qr-codes (3 minutes)
Step 2: The software
In order to make the clock to work we need some software on the pc and some on the arduino. All the needed code is in the 3 zip files attached to this step.
- On the pc a python script will check every minute the time, search in the img folder the right QR-code that represent the time and send the pixel trough the serial line.
- If you want to change the format of the qr-codes shown you can use the bash script to re-download the images (for example I use 24h time format. You could prefer the 12h one). I use google infographic service to produce the qr-codes. It’s super fast and doesn’t ban my IP also after a lot of requests.
Major Components in Project
The hardware
In order to build a QR-clock you need:
- Arduino UNO
- Color LCD & Joystick shield for Arduino
- USB cable for arduino
- A computer
Actually you can substitute my LCD shield with wathever LCD shield you have. You will need to adapt the code using the libraries of your shield.
For more detail: The useless but mazing QR-clock using Arduino
