LED Filament Clock

If you take a close look at modern Edison-style bulbs, you’ll notice that inside is a series of small LED filaments that combine to produce a pleasing glow. As it just so happens, you can buy these individual LED units for your own personal use, and as demonstrated by engineer “atomic14," you can create a seven-segment clock using them as segments. He tried two versions of the filaments, longer lights that use 3V power and a shorter version that, counterintuitively, lights up at 46V.

It’s a clever idea function-wise, but what really makes this display stand out is its lack of a continuous backing structure. Instead this clock uses a series of “XX” shaped PCBs oriented in a vertical direction when attached to the base PCB. Each XX structure features connections onto which the LED segments are soldered, suspending them in this unique clock configuration.

The project is built around an ESP32 board, allowing it to set the time over an NTP server. This also facilitates four interface buttons via a capacitive touch interface. While an interesting clock, atomic14 notes that the device’s readability could be better, and that there are a few other annoyances that he'd like to correct. So as cool as it is, perhaps we’ll see a new version in the future!

Code and board design is available here, while a waction below.