Pinball Clock Doubles as Gaming Display

As hackers, we love clocks. Unlike many things we work on for fun, custom clocks can have a practical purpose. Additionally, it’s normal for a clock’s appearance to be overtly electronic or mechanical — and if you can integrate old components into this type of project somehow, even better.

This particular clock uses a display recycled from a pinball machine. It checks all of the electromechanical boxes you’d want on a unique hack, with an ESP8266 and custom PCB to control the rotary four-digit display. Because of the way these numbers are changes, the clock is naturally quite noisy. If that wasn’t enough, it can optionally sound three-tone pinball chimes to indicate quarter, half, and full hours, or can strike a single bell if you so prefer.

Clock settings are modified via a web interface over WiFi, and time/date are taken care of by an NTP server or can be set manually. A battery-powered DS3231 RTC module is also used to help keep time accurately.

In addition to being a great time display, the device can be employed as a virtual pinball machine. Through a secondary web interface, one can play a pinball game where the virtual score is displayed on the physical wheels instead of the time or date.