alt Hacker NewsHow to build a circular LCD clock
Comments
Beat project, but
> I also tried with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, but 512 MB of RAM were too little to run a modern browser,
You don't need a browser to display graphics. And you don't need to be a programming whiz either. I'm sure Claude could write some python to render these clock faces.
> The Pi 3B+ seems just enough to render some simple animations.
> I think a Pi 4 might be a good sweet spot between processing power and price,
I know this isn't exactly a serious product and more of a gadget/gimmick but man we are off by a factor of like 3-4 here :D
How to build a circular LCD clock, step 1: buy a circular LCD that looks like a clock.
I'm not kidding, that's the extent of the build. They simply connect that display to a computer over HDMI. The only hacking here is browser-based JS for clock animations.
Maybe you'll love my minimalist clock design https://euclid.tulv.in/
> At first, I used some random phone chargers, but the Pis would always complain about undervoltage, and throttle their CPU
This is a real annoyance with raspberry pi's. At first you think that you can run them off of USB power, but then you realize that they start throttling at 4.75V, which is still within USB spec (especially when you consider the voltage drop across the USB cable). The point of a spec is that compliant stuff should work, so you shouldn't need a "high-quality" power supply and cable, just compliant ones.
I would love to find a circular LCD (even down to 1 or 2 inches across) that has a hole in the center, to be able to use it with a needle/stepper motor.
you can also do this with an esp32 as long as you don't insist using a browser to draw a clock
Did you have any issues with screen orientation? I have a waveshare round display in one of my projects too, they are great looking. Mine had an issue with wire orientation where I needed to have the wire emerge from the bottom of the display, but then I needed to rotate the picture to properly handle the rotation. It was tricky to get that working smoothly.
Also the display cuts off the corners on mine. Does it do the same for you? I'm not too bothered by it but it's only good for running custom SW where it's okay to be missing the corners.
I am currently building a project (http://www.screenwall.app) that tries to reuse old phones and tablets (that some people have in the drawer unused) as widget displays. Seeing such cool widgets always tempt me to buy it, although I know that my old Samsung A6 is perfectly capable for such things as well. :D
> I also tried with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, but 512 MB of RAM were too little to run a modern browser, sadly.
I found that the surf browser was efficient enough to run fine on my Raspberry Pi Zero W. YMMV with animations and such, but it's much better than any chromium alternative in my experience.
It's cool I like it, but seems a little overkill on the HW. no matter. One thing though, how is the screen 1080px1080 ? Is it a 1080p square, with the visible pixles a circle cut out of that ? I doubt it's a non rectilinear pixel grid. i guess it's x y coords, rather than cartesian ?
I wish you used banana for scale. I love the circular screens but man are they pricey compared to just square ones.
> White USB-A to USB-C cable > White HDMI to micro HDMI cable
Why do they need to be ...white :)
Oh i see the cables now and cant unsee them.
I guess next step is to 3D print a back case mount that encloses the RPi and plugs into a wall socket for power.
Are there epaper versions of those round displays? Maybe I'm old fashioned.
I wonder how smooth the animations are and how much energy it uses.
A 256MB Raspi Zero can comfortably drive a HDMI-connected display at 1080p60, and not even drop frames when rendering textured+shaded 3d if you just reasonably account for overdraw.
Drawing something as simple as this with a browser is peak overkill. If the watch had a unreal-like PBR graphics diorama for example, gigabytes would at least be argued for.
That modak font looks similar to one in Pixel phones clock. But Nice thing you made there :)
The cartoony clock looks a bit weird in terms of typography when the time is 10:29, the font kind of squeezes and becomes hard to read
[dead]
Author here! :) This article is me sharing something that made me really happy, wanting to show others how they can do the same.
I see some comments pointing out that the clock wouldn't need to run in the browser. I picked this option to make it simple for folks around me to quickly prototype their own clock faces. This isn't supposed to be the cheapest or most efficient implementation, either; feel free to build your own LCD clock and then blog about how you did it!