Clock with Stopwatch Activated by Accelerometer

Simple looking but very handy clock. It is battery operated uses low power LCD from Sharp. You can put it sideways and the display will rotate thanks to accelerometer.

By putting it upside down you start a stopwatch which is ideal functionality for cooking in a kitchen. You can also display seconds, temperature and battery voltage.

Step 1: Build Hardware

Stack the HARDWARIO IoT Kit modules on top of each other. Start with a Mini Battery Module and build other modules on top of it. It does not matter on the order which you stack modules on top. HARDWARIO IoT Kit is designed to connect the modules the way you like.

Step 2: Flash Firmware

Download HARDWARIO Playground multiplatform GUI tool to your computer. This tool can flash firmware. It also contains other features like MQTT broker and Node-RED with dasboard but we will not use that in this project.

• Connect Core Module to your PC and wait until the FTDI driver is installed
• Run the HARDWARIO Playground

Go to the Firmware tab and write "clock" to the firmware textbox to filter firmwares, choose bcf-lcd-clock-with-stopwatch firmware.

• Choose the correct serial COM port and press "FLASH FIRMWARE" button
• After flashing, the Core Module will turn on red LED for 2 seconds and display "0 : 00" on the LCD Module.
• See troubleshooting section orvisit HARDWARIO forum if something goes wrong

Step 3: Setup, Button and Accelerometer Functions

On the display you can see "0 : 00", now you need to set up the clock.

• Do a long press of the left or right button to jump to clock setup mode and to move between the digits. Move the cursor away to go back to time display mode.
• Short press of theleft button displays temperature of the internal temperature sensor TMP112.
• Short press of the right button displays a battery voltage.
• Long press of both buttons displays also seconds. This mode is more power hungry because LCD has to refresh every second.
• Rotate LCD Clock upside down and a timer starts to count.

Final Thoughts

LCD Module has LEDs so you can use them to notify the cooking user that the eggs are ready.

If you use Core Module with 868/915MHz radio (not the NR version) then you can enable wireless connection and display other infromation on the screen. You can also control your home with LCd Module buttons.

See also other HARDWARIO projects on Hackster.io or on their website

• Door Sensor project
• Radio Button Project
• Check out other HARDWARIO IoT Kit projects.
• Take a look at the Module Overview.
• Learn about MQTT and HARDWARIO IoT Kit MQTT topics to control LEDs and relays.
• Try other integrations with Grafana, Blynk, IFTTT, Ubidots and others.
• Use your Raspberry PI or other single board computer (SBC) as a server.
• Flash other firmware or write your own firmware for the Core Module.
• Check the Core Module pinouts and add your own buttons, relays and sensors.