7 Segment Displays - the Backstory to Clocks by Patricia

It all started with what the 7 year old in our house called sausages….. They were actually small LED filaments which were bought while Jonathan was coming up with a design for low voltage garden lighting for our house.

The LED filaments were nice and bright and came in different colours. Jonathan’s dad David saw them and as usual extended the idea into something exciting with an offhand remark. “You could make a nice seven segment display with those filaments Jonathan”.

Given Jonathan and his dad used to work together in their own business designing and building safety guarding for machinery its not surprising what happened next. Jonathan created a printed circuit board for a seven segment display. Then Jonathan and his dad talked about the design and the software to control it. All the people in our house also offered their input.

Now we had a seven segment display so the next step is that why wouldn’t you make a multiple seven segment display chain so you could display the time amongst other things. Now what Jonathan really wanted was to make a “Back to the Future” clock like in the Delorian but that required 14 segment displays so you can guess what happened next.

So we got seven segment displays, 14 segment displays, and also a clock. The technical design of the Iodine clock is described in the next section as its worth getting into detail so you can see the work involved.

We actually made heaps of designs of clocks and seven segment displays with heaps of 3D printed and resin printed parts on the way to the Iodine Clock design. When we provide either the clocks in kit form or complete and the displays to the general public we want them to be reliable and useful and that requires a lot of design iteration because you only see flaws in design when you make enough of something.

To leave you with a nice thought….Ideas grow when you work on them. We think its more fun if other people are involved plus you get the benefit of their experience and ideas.

We look forward to helping you grow your ideas too.