Day of the Week Clock

What day is it? If you’re in the working world you probably have some sense of whether it's, say, Wednesday or Sunday, but if you’re retired, each day becomes a de facto Saturday. Keeping track of what day it actually is therefore becomes a bit harder, or at least less important.

To address this issue, Random Tat Builder created the Day of the Week Clock and built several of them as retirement gifts. The device acts as a very simple automated desk calendar, with a white 3D-printed days-of-the-week roll that advances every 24 hours to show the new day. A black 3D-printed housing holds the roll in place, as well as the 28BYJ-48 stepper that turns it.

The Day of the Week Clock is controlled via a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 board, along with a ULN2003 stepper driver. A Hall effect sensor and a magnet embedded in the roll is used for alignment. Two buttons are provided as an onboard user interface, and it also generates a webpage-based interface for setup.

In basic (non-Wi-Fi) mode, the device simply uses a timer to count up to 24 hours, then advances the clock face once it reaches the appropriate time. Setting up Wi-Fi means that the clock follows network time, aligning itself automatically on each Sunday.

Code for the build, complete with print files, are linked in the project writeup and a longer explanation on the project is seen in the video below.