eM4 clock

I'm working for the company ABL GmbH and working on the eM4 wallbox product.

As we have a lot of front plates laying around and needed farewell gift for a college who decided to resign…we decided to create clock out of the LED ring of the front plate. As the original HMI has only 10 LEDs, I had to create a new design using 12x WS2812B LEDs.

You have to remove the original black plastic part inside the LED ring and the original diffusor from the back of the front plate (using hot air gun). After that you can place the printed diffusor. It will already be held in place by the original adhesive. On top of the diffusor comes the LED and ESP frame part which can be held in place with mounting tape on each of the four bridges.

The LEDs will be just snapped in (needs to be done before mounting it onto the back of the plate) and soldered from the back of the frame. The ESP32C3 Super Mini will be also just snapped in on the back of the frame.

The frame is a bit difficult to print because of the wiring support and the ESP holder on the back, but it works.

The diffusor should be printed in white PLA without any support or infill to get the most brightness out of it.

The Arduino firmware for the ESP32C3 Super Mini can be found here.

For those who don't own a spare front plate, I also designed a small standalone housing (like a mini eM4) with a roman numeral front instead of the original HMI ring. The frame with the diffusor can easily be snapped into the housing. The housing can be just put on a desk or it can be hung on the wall.