After a Mac Mini with its nifty enclosure was certified as dead, the owner of this particular one decided to use the beautiful casing as a base for a colorful LED clock. As you can see from the video above, once you know how to tell the time from the seemingly randomly lit LEDs at first glance it becomes fairly simple. The so-called clock face has been divided into two columns with the left larger one being the hours in increments of 1 followed by minutes and seconds (in that order) in increments of five and the narrower column on the right with the hours in increments of 12 (2 on top for PM and 2 at the bottom for AM) followed by the minutes and seconds in increments of 1 respectively.
The time as seen in the picture above is 10:23:42pm. If you’re wondering about the off-centre white LEDs at the bottom of the ‘clock’ it is being used as a LED pendulum which scrolls left and right as the seconds light up and time marches on. The entire display is said to use two MAX7219 LED drivers to control the LED grid and it is built on a protoboard. An Arduino is used to integrate everything with a Chronodot to ensure an accurate keep on the time. On top of that, the clock has a built-in ambient light sensor which toggles the brightness or intensity of the LEDs according to the lighting conditions around it to ensure optimum readability. You can catch the video of the recycled Mac Mini below.
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