not your ordinary led clock.

Hey, I'm new here; I was linked to this site by my electronics teacher. I have an idea for my final project, and I was hoping someone could tell me the best way to go about doing this.

It's going to be a clock, but instead of 7-segment LEDs or LED matrices or anything like that, I want to make a display like the one here: https://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/7437/

Basically, each group of LEDs tells you one digit, depending on the number of LEDs lit up. (So for example, if the first group had 1, the second group had 2, the third had 4, and the fourth had 9, it would be 12:49.) I would like the whole nifty randomly-changing-every-few-seconds feature, but that might be a bit over my head.

I would also like momentary switches to set the time, if possible. I may try to incorporate tilt switches to make a buttonless interface, if I have time.

I'm guessing the easiest way to do this would be with some sort of microcontroller, but I wouldn't know. Please explain as much as you can; I'm pretty new at this kinda stuff.

Thanks!
Robert

There can be many ways

Hi,

Simple binary to decimal decoder can do your job. However using a micro such as the PIC would make it easier. Dump in the values to the ports and use a few rotates to get different patterns for same display.

Regards

Sougata

Sougata,

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know.