One of our managers is retiring next year. Every day he writes down the number of days remaining.
We are going to hang a digital display on the wall by his office that allows him to push a button and increment down a day from his total. To help him keep track we would love it to also output the day of the week or the date. If it is unplugged we accept it will reset to the starting number of days left ~280.
Anyone have suggestions of how to do this?
Cam
You will need an Arduino, a pushbutton, a power supply and a compatible digital display of some sort. For large displays, check Adafruit and Sparkfun.
It would be very useful to add a DS3231 RTC, so which would automatically retain the date and time if unplugged. There are plenty of on-line tutorials for using that RTC with Arduino.
to push a button and increment down a day from his total.
Just in case he decides to retire later, you should add a switch to allow him to decrement up the number of days remaining.
cammatthews:
One of our managers is retiring next year. Every day he writes down the number of days remaining.We are going to hang a digital display on the wall by his office that allows him to push a button and increment down a day from his total. To help him keep track we would love it to also output the day of the week or the date. If it is unplugged we accept it will reset to the starting number of days left ~280.
Anyone have suggestions of how to do this?
Cam
Why not just make him a custom, paper wall calendar so that he can tear off a page each day?
If you really want to build a countdown thingy with an Arduino for "brains" and a digital (LED-based, I suppose) display, keep in mind that the Arduino has something called "EEPROM" which can be used to "save" a number for in case the power goes out or some such.
What will happen to this display once he retires? Will it go in the trash?
I am reminded of some "millennium" clocks from the year 1999. They showed a countdown until the new year 2000, at which point they automatically switched modes and became regular digital clocks with the date and time. That way, they were still useful once the countdown had ended.
For the numbers, I suggest you look into 7-segment displays. If instead you use 14- and/or 16-segment displays, then you will be able to show letters as well as numbers.
I don't know all that much about segmented displays, but I do know that if you have a lot of digits, you are likely to run out of pins on your Arduino. There are chips available to help you with this. Other people are in a better position to provide details than I am.