Published August 27, 2022 © GPL3+

M5Stack Digital Clock

How to create a 4 digit digital clock using the M5Stack Digital-Clock Unit.

BeginnerProtip1 hour1,275

Things used in this project

Hardware components

M5Stack Core2 AWS

M5Stack Digi-Clock Unit

Software apps and online services

M5Stack UIFLow

Story

Simple Digital Clock.

In this quick guide I will show you the basic code needed to display hours and minutes on the M5Stack Digi-clock unit after retrieving the time using RTC.

For this I used:

Core2 AWS - https://shop.m5stack.com/collections/m5-controllers/products/m5stack-core2-esp32-iot-development-kit-for-aws-iot-edukit?ref=pfpqkvphmgr

Digi-Clock Unit - https://shop.m5stack.com/products/red-7-segment-digit-clock-unit?ref=pfpqkvphmgr

The Digi-clock unit is connected with a provided grove cable to port A of the Core2 AWS. The following simple code is the minimum needed un UIFlow to retrieve time with the RTC and display it on the Digi-clock unit:

Minimum basic code for the 4 digit clock

The trick to this is to call the hours and miniuts but join them using a text string joining block. A Wait block is needed to prevent the i2C bus from getting overloaded with string messages getting sent.

Stalk/Contact me!

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The Official forums here: https://community.m5stack.com

Via Twitter : https://twitter.com/Cpt_J_Purcell

Basic digital Clock Code

from m5stack import *
from m5stack_ui import *
from uiflow import *
import time
import unit

screen = M5Screen()
screen.clean_screen()
screen.set_screen_bg_color(0xFFFFFF)
digi_clock_0 = unit.get(unit.DIGI_CLOCK, unit.PORTA)

label0 = M5Label('label0', x=2, y=49, color=0x000, font=FONT_MONT_14, parent=None)

rtc.settime('ntp', host='cn.pool.ntp.org', tzone=1)
label0.set_text(str(rtc.datetime()))
digi_clock_0.init_i2c_address(0x30)
while True:
  digi_clock_0.write_match_string(((str((rtc.datetime()[4])) + str((rtc.datetime()[5])))))
  wait_ms(500)
  wait_ms(2)