Deadly Computer Blog

So, while i was setting up my stuff in my dorm room the other day, i faced a delima. We moved our dressers, and i no longer had a place to put my clock to put it on the same level as my bed (my bed is 4 feet off the ground, and we used to have the two dressers on top of each other). Mike suggested that i just take a strip of duck tape, and just tape it to the wall. I thought about that, but decided not to because then i couldn’t get to the switches to turn the alarm on/off. So as a joke, i asked, “How hard would it be to flip the led display upside down, so i could tape it to the bottom of my shelf?” And stupidly they answered, “Not hard at all” Well, 4 hours,lots of burnt fingers, and 1.5 extended magazine glue gun glue sticks later, we got this:

full instructions after the click:

Things you’ll need:
(click all pictures for high quality images)

1. Clock: i used this Timex (R) AM/FM Alarm clock that i got for school 2 years ago

2. Screwdrivers (for the clock above, you only need a phillips head)

3. hot glue, & hot glue gun, and scissors

4. IDE cable

5. soldering iron & solder

That’s five easy things that most people have yay!

Now begins the actual building of the clock:

———————————Step 1:
Take appart the clock. There are 4 screws on the bottom of this clock, they aren’t even tight.

Step 2:
Remove the screws on the circuit boards:

The two green circles are screws holding down the buttons on the top (Snooze, set time…) The four purple circles are screws holding down the main circuit board, and the current converter, (the wires are very short to that, and it needs to be unscrewed).

As you can tell, you don’t have much give on the wires, mainly cause of the converter:

That flat grey wire connecting the led display to the circuit board, take your scissors and cut it in half. Don’t be scared, just do it. That wire is what’s preventing the display from flipping upside down, so it needs to be lengthened, this is where the IDE cable comes in. The wires inside an IDE cable are perfect size for this, they just need to be separated, and stripped, which brings us to…

Step 4: Strip the IDE cable

In total we counted we needed 22 wires, including that black one on the end, that we’re really not sure what it does, but it’s probably important.

Step 5: Strip the LED and circuit board wires

You don’t need to leave as much wire as we did, in fact, if you can, it would be much better if you unsoldered the wires from the holes, you’ll understand in Step 11 b why that would have been a better idea.

Step 6: Solder the IDE wires onto the LED display

If you unsoldered the original wires, just solder the IDE wires into the holes.

Step 7: Insulate the wires

If you remember, the original wires were insulated in thick plastic, preventing them from touching, well, we have stripped off this plastic on the connector ends, and, this poses a problem, our solution, hot glue!

The amount of hot glue you need to use is dependent on the length of the original wires you left stripped, so, the as i said above, the shorter the better. Also, if you unsoldered the original wires, you should still run a bead of hot glue along the end just for safety reasons.

Step 10 a: Solder & insulate the ends of the wires to the circuit board

Its pretty much the same way as before, the shorter the better, although it may be hard to unsolder the original wires this time.

Step 10 b: test the clock

It works, It shouldn’t work, but it does, yay!

note*** If you’re careful, you can test the clock before you insulate the wires, in case you’re scared you made a mistake. ***noteStep 11 a: Reassembly

Begin by screwing in the main circuit board, and the power converter. (we noticed that the plastic used in this clock is very low quality, and breaks easily, that’s nothing a little hot glue wont fix).

Next put the buttons back on. For us, the left support broke beyond the repair of hot glue, so, we had a stroke of genius, use the plastic end of the IDE cable for support. It just needed to be cut down a little:

Step 11 b: Shoving the LED display in

This is the hard part, with the much emphasis on hard. Putting the LED display back into the clock, upside down, and getting the case to fit back on. But, before we do that, lets test to make sure that the clock still works:

it does yay!

now back to business. Me and eric spent about an hour pondering over how to get it in,

and, it turns out that there was no easy way to do it, it just wouldn’t work. We used way too much hot glue insulating the wires. Which is why in retro respect, it would have been a good idea to unsolder the original wires, and put the IDE ones in their place, because it would have meant less hot glue, and more room to bend. Also, we didn’t need 6 inches of wire, only about 3 inches were needed for what we wanted.

Since there wasn’t enough room to get the display into its slanted position between the circuit board, and the buttons, we had to “modify” the original design. And by modify, i mean break it. We cut the bottom edges off of the display case, making the display able to be vertical. Then we shoved the top on, and screwed it into place.

note*** it is very important that you test the buttons on the top of the clock before you screw it back together. You don’t want to have everything shoved into the box perfectly, and have to take it all appart because you can’t set the alarm. ***note

i decided to take the plastic viewer off of the case, and glue it onto the display, this way i know which dots do what (you know, when its 10am, and 10 pm, cause we live in the dark here)

Step 12: Mounting

This whole project was started because i needed a place to put my clock. I had a place, under my shelf, but then the numbers would have been upside down, well, now that we’ve fixed that, lets put it in place. How do you think we’ll be mounting this clock, if you guessed hot glue, you’re right!

We ran a bead of hot glue around the edge of the clock, and that’s holding it up fine.

Finished!!!

Now, that only took us 4 hours, but, that’s cause we didn’t know what we were doing, and we made some mistakes, but its defiantly a project worth undergoing if you have the time, its so unique!

Posted in: DIY, awesome by steve /