Projects – Adrian’s electronics blog

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Projects

IR code finder LCD version

admin
23/08/2025

My friend Rick sent this over to me which he managed to get working – it is a sketch which displays the results of an infra-red remote control hex codes on an LCD display. Ideal for if you want to use those cheap Chinese remote controls for your electronics projects but are unsure what key […]

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Projects

Further firmware update for my 6 digit ATMega328P clock

admin
31/07/2025

With collaboration with my friend Rick, I have updated the firmware for my clock and his version as well. My version shows the hours and minutes on 1.8″ displays and the seconds on 0.8″ displays. Rick’s version uses 4″ high digits driven from my display driver boards discussed in a previous blog post with alternate […]

3 min 0

Projects

Large 2.3″ 6 digit 7 segment display board for hobbyists

admin
05/04/2024

This project came to being when I wanted a large multi digit 7 segment LED display but I was only able to find MAX7219 or similar based display boards with digit heights up to 0.56″. Not being able to find what I wanted, I decided to make a 6 digit clock (one of my earlier […]

3 min 13

Projects

Build a large 6 digit clock using 1.8″ + 0.8″ LED displays and TPIC6B595 shift registers

admin
10/11/2023

The project I recently bought a few LED displays as a job lot which were parts for fruit machines; the type you see in the local pub and after testing them I found that they had a nice bright red / orange colour to them and decided to use them for a large clock project. […]

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Buying cheap components from Chinese suppliers – win this time!

admin
22/10/2023

I have a couple of electronics projects in the works which use large LED displays and as they have a forward voltage of 8.4V and 20mA current they cannot be driven directly from a microcontroller using multiplexing. I could use a bunch of driver transistors or MOSFETS but that needs 14 pins on the microcontroller […]

2 min 2

NTP clock only version of my ESP8266 based display

admin
27/04/2021

As there was interest I have released firmware for my YouTube statistics and clock internet connected display featured in my previous post for users who just want an NTP clock and don’t require the YouTube counter functions. This clock automatically gets the time from the NTP server and synchronises it with the software based RTC […]

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ESP8266 based NTP clock with YouTube statistics display

admin
08/03/2021

I made some internet connected 8 digit 7 segment LED displays using a NodeMCU and Harris semiconductor ICM7228A LED driver ICs the latter of which were salvaged from old aircraft avionics. As the chips would unlikely sell on eBay I decided to make them into a project and improve upon my earlier YouTube counter project […]

2 min 7

1940’s National watch cleaning machine repair

Adrian Smith
16/09/2020

I was given this machine to repair & restore – a National Electric watch cleaning machine Model 1 which dates from the 1940’s. It was in a very poor condition, rusty and all electrical parts visibly corroded and the original fabric insulation on the wiring had rotten. This was a very dangerous machine even when […]

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Projects

A small update to my dual colour pong clock

Adrian Smith
27/07/2020

I’ve released a small update to my arduino controlled dual colour pong clock project (V1.24) which fixes flickering on the seven segment display when the LED matrix is being updated. The change basically stops the matrix from updating when it’s blank as it does not need to. I also made some tweaks to the brightness […]

2 min 2

Bangood XL4016 adjustable voltage regulator first impressions

Adrian Smith
24/06/2020

I am building a basic power supply for a project and decided to try one of the XL4016E1 based regulator modules commonly available on eBay, Amazon and Bangood which is advertised as being able to handle an 8A / 200W load. I only need up to 2A for my project but at £7.99 it seemed […]

2 min 12

Using Arduino to control display module salvaged from LED sign.

Adrian Smith
31/05/2020

I came across someone selling parts from a large LED sign on ebay which by doing some research came from a Data Display LED board originally used for movie name, showtimes and price information display in a cinema lobby. Their part number could be DL110 as that’s the only number I can find on the […]

2 min 1

Projects

A constant current load using mosfet and LM358

Adrian Smith
26/04/2020

In my below post I mentioned that I am building a bench PSU however I am still waiting for the parts to arrive. I decided to make a constant current load in order to test the electronic fuse and the power supply itself. I had built one before but the mosfet kept blowing after a […]