Its about time: ClockTWO!

I know you've been asking yourself, why is there no large open-source-hardware RGB LED array available? Anool and I wondered the same thing. You may have seen our earlier clock, the Worduino, based on Doug Jackson's ever popular Word Clock. This time, we decided to design a general-purpose Arduino based RGB array. The hefty 12 x 9 inch board supports up to 160 individually addressable RGB LEDs and an additional 32 mono LEDs which will easily accommodate a word clock. Our improved faceplate allows you to program reminders to hydrate with your favorite beverage. Looks like its "beer thirty" again. But, if you put a map transparency in front of it, you got the makings of a sunclock. Or maybe you just need some colorful scrolling text.

Those familiar with Evil Mad Science Peggy2 board will recognize the array architecture right away. It was a huge relief to start with a functional design and our hats are off to the the Evil Scientists! In addition to the array we have added a real time clock, light sensor, buzzer, and I2C interfaces for chaining boards horizontally end-to-end. The small squares on the right are pin compatible breakout boards, dubbed rtcBOB, that are pin compatible with the Chronodot.

Anool did a beautiful job with the layout and routing, painstakingly adding the myriad traces by hand. We ordered 10 boards for our initial run and plan to populate two test boards: one in India and one in the States. If it works like we hope, we will be making it available. If you want to get your hands on one early or have other questions or comments, drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.

This is an open source hardware project (whatever that means). We will make all of the design files available when we decide on a (commercial friendly) licence.