Press for Time Process

Midterm: Press for Time

For this project, I was inspired by how frustrating it can be to set the clock on a microwave or oven. I find it is usually an unexpected combination of pressing and holding certain buttons and can never remember how to do it a few months later when it’s daylight savings again.

Press for Time is a purposefully difficult microwave clock to set. If you manage to set the correct time, the clock blinks a few times and then resets to zero.

Things I did / used / experimented with:

rotary encoder
RTC (thank you Jess!)
soldering
heat shrinking
interface design????
using a bunch of buttons
linear potentiometer

I started by getting a seven segment display to work:

Got the display to work

Programmed it to write my name :)

First time working with a rotary encoder

Version 1: rotary encoder + 4 buttons

User testing. It was around this time that I added a linear potentiometer which is a fun little toy. Also, I added an RTC (thanks Jess!)

Illustrator design for interface

This is the breakdown of what my code is doing:

- RTC keeps time (current time displayed on serial monitor)
- Constantly check if the time on the display matches with the real time.
- If the time matches up, blink 3 times and then reset.

got the correct time!

me testing something - i don't remember what

more testing

Interface design
Like all fabrication projects, this took waaaay longer than expected. This was my first time making a physical interface for buttons/sliders/etc, so there was a lot of measuring / cutting / measuring again going on. I had only a small sheet of acrylic to work with, so instead of making a whole box like I wanted to, I just made the front panel.