Pac-Man Theme Clock

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In this video I make a Pac-Man theme clock from pieces and parts that I already had laying around the shop. I built the clock so that it would do some animation at set intervals, which can be adjusted in the source code. The current time is shown in the score display.


The Pac-Man and ghosts are made from 1/8" plywood. I would have 3d printed them. However, my old 3d printer will not print an object that big. The gears and servo mount are a modified from a similar project I did a few years ago and are 3d printed. I have made changes to the 3d objects so that they will move the Pac-Man's mouth with a hobby servo. All of the files and source code are available in the link below.

The electronics part of the clock are run from a Teensy 2.0. I like the Teensy boards because they can emulate other devices and are compatible with the Arduino IDE. The clock is operated by a simple RTC module and the servo is a regular sized hobby servo that you would find in most RC cars. The clock display is a serial LED board. I used this because it reduces the number of wires required to drive the display, plus it's all I had on hand. There are no other parts other than a couple of pull up resistors on the RTC and a couple of filter caps.

I have encountered one problem when both the EL wire and servo are both hooked up at the same time. After about 5 minutes, the Teensy starts to go haywire. I don't know if it is a Teensy thing or if the EL wire and the servo are just too noisy. I have tried several filter caps and nothing seems to solve the problem. If I don't try to run both the servo and the EL wire at the same time, everything works great. So it's either one or the other right now. If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, let me know and I'll post them here.


You can get the 3d files and Arduino source code here.




Materials Used: