Arduino tells the time in words

Arduino WORD CLOCK Project

Found this project Micro Word Clock and decided to give it a go, I couldn't find any code for Arduino so I mashed up some code, the code works however I want to add a flashing asterix to show seconds.

Equipment needed:

• Arduino Uno


• 8x8 LED Matrix with MAX7219


• SparkFun Real Time Clock Module (DS1307)

The 8x8 LED matrix is 32mm x 32mm  so the math was easy each cell needed to be 4mm², I started by using Microsoft EXCEL to get the letters in a grid however I couldn't get the cells size to be 4mm X 4mm ( 3.97mm X 3.97mm) so I tried Openoffice and guess what no problem.  Once all letters was added you need to center text left to right and top to bottom, make all cells background black and text white, the font I used was consolas size 8.  I have added the files with the source code on github.

Wiring:

RTC DS1307

• Connect SCL to A5


• Connect SDA to A4


• Connect 5V and GRD

MAX7219 - 8x8 LED MAtrix

• Connect DIN to Pin 8


• Connect CS to Pin 9


• Connect CLK to Pin10

Code:
https://github.com/catchcoder/arduino/tree/master/Max7219_8x8led_with_RTC

Images:

How to enable SPI on Raspbery PI and enable SPI module for Python

• Enable SPI on Raspberry PI


• Enable SPI for use in Python

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Enable SPI on Rasperry PI

From the command line type:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

You will then see

Comment out the blacklist spi-bcm2708 by prefixing it with #

 Press and hold 'CTRL' and press 'O',  then press 'ENTER', then close nano with 'CTRL' + 'X'

You will need to reboot the type:

sudo reboot

When it has restarted you can test if it is working by typing 'lsmod', this display kernel modules loaded, you can wee from the image below the spi_bcm2708 module is now loaded,

SPI is now enabled on the Raspberry PI

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 Enable SPI for use in Python

To enable SPI to be used in python you need to install the python module for interfacing with SPI.

You will need internet access so you can download the code from github.

git clone https://github.com/doceme/py-spidev

Once you have cloned the py-spidev you will need to change to the directory and use python to install  the module.

cd py-spidev
sudo python setup.py install

It is now possible to use import spidev more information can be found here http://tightdev.net/SpiDev_Doc.pdf

import spidev