This is my first completed Arduino project. I kept searching the net for a Unix time* clock to buy and I could never find one. So I made my own. It displays Unix / Epoch time in decimal and hexadecimal. I also built in options to display longitude and latitude, and the number of days I’ve been alive (GMT). Plus, it’s got a special boot logo – see video.
The Arduino Mega has enough pins to connect and power four three digit seven segment displays, an RTC, and a GPS unit without having to use shift registers.
I could have easily cut the case out of acrylic, but I wanted something that looked more like an antique since Unix time is an older concept. My friend, Bob Boles, helped me with the woodworking. He did some of it, but I did a decent amount, too. The box is cherry with a tung oil finish.
When I showed the final project to Bob, I explained that I had been waiting for some geek to make one and he replied, “One did.”
*Unix time is the number of seconds after January 1st, 1970 GMT. It’s used by a lot of operating systems for time stamps. Yes, it’s a really geeky clock. And if you’re really good, you could figure out when I filmed this video and my exact birthday.