Topic: Clock with large digits

I wonder if anyone has created a clock with large digits that take up the entire chumby screen.  Without my contacts or glasses, the chumby is a big blur on my nightstand.  If there were bigger numbers I could lightly squint and see the time?  I wonder how difficult it is to design a clock - I would think that this is one of the easier widgets to code...  wouldn't mind trying it myself if I had a better idea on how to start.

Thanks,
JAS

Re: Clock with large digits

I'm pretty myopic myself (vision, not attitude), so I completely understand.

I'll see if I can put together such a high-contrast clock that's just hour:minutes as large as possible without blending into the bezel.

I've found a couple of the current digital clocks work surprisingly well.

Re: Clock with large digits

That would be much appreciated.  Currently I use Sun and Moon or Fashion Clock, but it's still hard to see.  Here's an idea - big numbers, with good contrast.

http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/6709/bigclockpi6.jpg

Re: Clock with large digits

Yeah, I have craptacular uncorrected vision also, which makes even that screen almost useless unless the chumby was sitting right at eye level by my face (which it isn't).  I was thinking you (or maybe me once I learn the device better) do something that would be help all but the most blind of us, and realize we can leverage a color screen to help us out.  First lets just say we need to know the time in the morning when we are without our glasses/contacts.  Second.  Assume we only need to know the Hours and Minutes.  I was thinking you could have the entire back of the screen (or the color of the digits) indicate the hours.  And just display the minutes taking up almost the entire screen.

So something like this (colors are just an example)

Black background = Midnight to < 4 am
Blue background = 5 am
Green background = 6 am
Red background = 7 am
Purple background = 8 am.
White background = 9+ am.

Sure you would have to memorize the colors that indicate the hours, but that would mean with even the quickest glance I would know the hour, and if I squinted the minutes.

Ok, my vision really blows but I can still tell colors from a good distance without my glasses, so another option might be to forget minutes all together:

Before I need to be out of bed: black
Time to get out of bed: white
Late for work by this time: red

And I could have the colors fade from one to the other.  So when I see it getting pink, I know I need to get up.  Or, just have 10 colors, one for each digit and just have 4 big blocks of colors (that might be hideous).

Since this device is programmable, we could have it go back to a "normal" clock at some time where it is highly likely that we're capable of seeing it.  So this mode, could switch to a more accurate time piece at some time.  At say midnight it could switch to our color mode.

Re: Clock with large digits

OK, I've added "Big Clock" (based on Jasafar's image), and "Huge Clock", which does a horizontal scroll of the digits as large as possible.

Let me know what you think.  The color idea is interesting - I might play with that to see if something works there.

Re: Clock with large digits

Thanks Duane.  I'm running Big Clock right now...we'll see how it looks tonight when I'm in bed and have my contacts out.  I do have a bit of haloing, so the blur is high...I hope the contrast will be enough.  The Huge Clock is a great idea...I'll try that too.  Looking forward to see future renditions.  Thanks again!

ALSO, I'd like to know what's involved with making a clock myself too!  I'm guessing it's probably one of the easier widgets to make if you have a little bit of programming experience.  Do you have a tutorial for beginners?

Re: Clock with large digits

Well, this is a pretty simple clock to do in Flash.

It's basically the blue background, with three "dynamic text fields" (which means that can have their contents changed) and one "static text field" for the colon.  The text fields are called "hoursText" "minutesText" and "secondsText".


Then it has the following Actionscript on the first frame:

lastSeconds = -1;

this.onEnterFrame = function() {
    var d = new Date();
    var seconds = d.getSeconds();
    if (seconds!=lastSeconds) {
        lastSeconds = seconds;
        var hours = d.getHours();
        if (hours>12) {
            hours -= 12;
        }
        if (hours==0) {
            hours = 12;
        }
        hoursText.text = hours;
        
        var minutes = d.getMinutes();
        if (minutes<10) {
            minutes = '0'+minutes;
        }
        minutesText.text = minutes;
        if (seconds<10) {
            seconds = '0'+seconds;
        }
        secondsText.text = seconds;
    }
}

Most of the code is related to converting between a 24-hour clock to a 12-hour clock, and adding leading zeros as appropriate.