Pinball style Clock

This is my project for the bambulab clock contest.

It is inspired by the scorewheels of electromechanical pinball machines.

The clock is using 4 score wheels mounted on 28BJY-48 Stepper motors for displaying the time.

When setting up the clock, it has to be homed. Therefore the homing button needs to be pressed around 5s. All 4 wheels will drive to 0 position.

This will also reset the used RTC to 00:00.

The time can be adjsuted by holding the Set button for 5 sec.

Afterwards the time adjustment is happening by pressing the + button. with the Set button you can switch between the wheels for the setup.

After adjusting the last wheel, another press on the Set button will bring the clock back to operating mode.

There are 6 different LED Modes also brightness can be adjusted in 3 different modes (low, medium, high).

I split up the code on 2 arduino (1x for logic 1x for driving the stepper).

Following electronic components are needed:

2x Arduino Nano

1x RTC Module DS3231

4x 28BYJ-48 Stepper + 4x ULN2003 driver board

4x Microswitch

5x Button

1x WS2812B LED strip with 6 pixels

1x 0,1uf condensator for LED strip (optional)

1x 10k resistor for dataline of LED strip (optional)

1x power supply 5v with >3A

1x connector for power supply

1x 5x7cm Prototype PCB (optional)

1x 2x8cm Prototype PCB (optional)

Assembling:

Insert the M4 nuts in the cutouts

Insert M2 nuts on all counter parts for microswitches and for the Button PCB mount

Install stepper and microswitches in the stepper mount

Install score wheels

Adjust Microswitch position, that it is triggered when showing 0

Mount the scorwheels and Solder all components on the board

Mount the electronic boards on the PCB mounting part

Install heat inserts in the bottom case and screw donw the PCB board (don't forget to insert buttons first)

Connect score board and mount it down with M4 screws

It should look like that now

Install top cover and front plate

Here is the connection plan for the electronics:

Please not that the RX/TX connection must be opened in order to be able for updating code.

Therefore I installed jumpers at my prototype PCB.

Note: The code is not final yet. It still needs to be optimized a bit, but a basically it is working.