Why do we have all of these redundant LED segments in the clocks around us. Just to show one digit of time we use 7 LEDs. If you are looking for a less is more solution to showing the time then you need to have a look at the Blinky Clock that John Boxall created. It is being run from a ATmega328 Microcontroller and a DS1307 Real Time Clock. This isn’t a clock that you can glance at to read the time but wouldn’t it be nice to point to it when your guest ask for the time.

“Using a minimal Arduino bootrom system, a DS1307 real time clock IC and an RGB diffused LED, we can make a clock that blinks the time, using the colours of the LED to note different numerical values. For example, if the time is 12:45, the clock will blink red 12 times, then show blue for a second (think of this as the colon on a digital clock) then blink four times in green (for forty minutes), then blink three times in red for the individual minutes. If there is a zero, blink blue quickly.”