Ice Cube display suggestion

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Grant
 
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Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by Grant »

I just received my kit and haven't built it yet, but after
reading through the docs, I've got a couple suggestions for the
display format:

1) Leading zero blanking. Displaying 9:00 as "9 00 00"
instead of "09 00 00" seems a bit more polished. [Perhaps
that's just a USian thing.]

2) Alarm indicator. Displaing negative values when the alarm
is on seems a bit strange. I'd probably use the rightmost
decimal point as an alarm-on indicator.

I'll probaby take a shot at changing the firmware.
Unfortunately I've got an Atmel JTAG interface but no ISP
interface. I'll have to see if I can find a cheap one...

--
Grant

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mike31416
 
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Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by mike31416 »

Hello,

How about the USBtinyISP ($22)? Or you can turn the Arduino into an AVR-ISP programmer:
http://tinker.it/now/2006/12/04/turn-ar ... rogrammer/

Mike

adafruit
 
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Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by adafruit »

we might get rid of the leading zero, it was sort of an arbitrary design decision. but the - was the only symbol we thought was legible from far away

Grant
 
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Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by Grant »

mike31416 wrote:How about the USBtinyISP ($22)?
That's certainly looks like about as good a deal as you can
find. There are some slightly cheaper ones that use either
RS232 or parallel interfaces, but both of those are getting
rare. The cheaper ones also don't seem to be compatible with
avrdude.

Grant
 
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:45 pm

Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by Grant »

adafruit wrote:we might get rid of the leading zero, it was sort of an
arbitrary design decision.
Certainly, and I think the leading zero is common in some regions.
but the - was the only symbol we thought was legible from far
away
That's true; I hadn't thought about that. I guess none of the
other alarm clocks I've used have alarm-on indicators that are
visible from more than a couple feet away, and that's never
bothered me.

I'll have to order the tinyUSB ISP kit and play with the
firmware.

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hinermad
 
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Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by hinermad »

Grant wrote:
adafruit wrote:we might get rid of the leading zero, it was sort of an
arbitrary design decision.
Certainly, and I think the leading zero is common in some regions.
I've seen 12/24 hour clocks that displayed the leading zero if in 24 hour mode and blanked it in 12 hour mode.

The nice thing about an open-source clock is that you can do some neat things with it, like this:

http://xkcd.com/313/

Dave

sparr
 
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Re: Ice Cube display suggestion

Post by sparr »

If you want to buy a kit for me, I'd be happy to build an alternate firmware without the leading zero (or with an option), and with the alarm indicator moved to a decimal point.

:)

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