World Clock Sets Itself Using NTP

Kaleb Clark works with people around the world. As such, clicking through a website, checking his phone, or doing a bit of math can be a bit of a hassle, so he decided to build his own custom world clock. The device runs on an Arduino Nano 33 IoT, which synchronizes the time over WiFi using NTP, so he’ll never even have to set it!

For its main display, the device employs a 3.5” PiTFT Plus touchscreen. As the name implies, this is normally used with a Raspberry Pi board, but connects via SPI so is fully capable of Arduino control. This shows eight time zones, plus the date, and a counter bar that ticks up the seconds. An additional two time zones can be shown on four digit 7-segment displays next to the PiTFT. User interface is provided by a single encoder, which lets the user select between different time zones that can be displayed, and whether they are in 12 or 24-hour format.

The clock is fashioned in a 3D-printed enclosure, which took a few design cues from the conversion calculator that we featured here earlier this year. More information can be found on its project page, and code is available on GitHub.