Lasermad.com

Hi Tony,

d'you think you can cram a simplified clock in there? maybe like showing industrial time (9:30 as 09,5) or just a digit short (09,3) or shifted when there is room (single-digit hours as 9,30 before 10:00 and 10,3 after with two-digit numbers)?
hm. setting it would be a problem i guess, with it just having a single "button", eh?
well, just something that crossed my mind.
Cheers!
bob

It would be possible to make a 2-digit clock, the symbols 'H' 'M' ans 'S' are available on the IN19 tubes so you could sequence '11 H' '15 M' '33 S', a few others could represent day month and year but they're not as intuitive. The main problem is there's no accurate timebase in there, the external sensor port could be used to provide one. Choices are from a NMEA GPS with serial decoding done on the PIC, an accurate RTC module with a small controller to supply a one-wire data stream or even a Rubidium oscillator to provide a clock for the pic to count
For controls, other than the IR sensor the input to pin 17 isn't being used for much, at the moment when grounded it forces alternate internal/external sensor display. It could be used for a pushbutton to set the time. No alarm though unless you want to just use it as a display frontend and build the extra features into the external time source.