Ah, 5mm LED. They used to be a popular choice, but in recent years have been replaced by smaller SMD components and/or more powerful RGB components. However, they are still able to do the job and are a great way to provide a proper homemade look for your project. [Ian Dunn] Choose those extraordinary parts to produce his 4017 ten years binary clock.
The clock only uses digital logic ICs to tell the time-there is no microcontroller here! After nearly a year of four or five iterations, [Ian] Finally, the circuit can be operated reliably. As you might expect, it relies on a 32.768 kHz crystal to provide a stable clock. Input a 4060 binary ripple counter, the clock is divided 14 times to provide a 2Hz square wave. Then obtain the required 1Hz signal through the 4027 trigger. From there, a bunch of extra logic processing calculates seconds, minutes, and hours, and resets the counter as needed.
The PCB containing the project is directly printed by a flat-panel inkjet printer, [Ian] Buy it under the inspiration of our previous article on how to make PCB in the mall. In this case, he didn’t actually use it to make the PCB, but the flatbed printer did a good job of putting the graphics on the board.
The result is a very attractive appearance, which may surprise some electronics enthusiasts who have never seen a graphic printed circuit board before. We think this technique can also be used to have a huge impact on conference badges. If you have tried similar techniques, please leave us a message!